18+ Only Exophilia Blog. This is a little collection of both my work, and the work of others that I really super enjoy. If you want that dope content but also don't care for any of my personal anecdotes, this is the blog for you my dude.
The celebration has to do with seasons. Or solstices. Or just an excuse for sex, you don’t know, you don’t care. No one pays you much mind when you grab a food tray; no creature spares you a second glance as you skitter through the fray. The promise of death hangs heavy in your throat, eyes wide, desperation high.
No one else can have him.
A killer can recognize a killer. An assassin will always spot another assassin. The weight of murder is something almost too easy to hide, guilt covered up with jewels and clothes and smiles. The ones who act too sweet and too simple are the ones to look at critically, teeth and knives and poison lighter than the lies that pass through your mouth.
Starward Matchmakers™ (owned by Abraxas Corporations™) have been bringing people together for almost a century! Their success rates at finding the perfect person for someone is unprecedented. Anyone who can afford it does it. They find their soulmate, and live happily ever after, and are one more success story under Starward Matchmakers’ belt.
You made the mistake of trying your luck with them. It’s only a test, after all, and a small DNA sample, so you thought that, in the worst case, you wouldn’t be paired with anyone.
This is the final story in the Magical Desires series! You'll have the most context and best experience if you read the other four stories first. They are linked here in the recommended reading order: Mephisto, Yacariel, Anthoza, Cherise.
CONTENT WARNING: This story contains descriptions of death, corpses, disease, and societal collapse.
It's the final chapter. The world is in tatters. You are fighting for survival. Your best chance is to upload. But is it really worth it?
Over the course of the past six months, you had somehow gotten into both the worst and best shape in your life.
The best because you were certainly a lot stronger than you had once been. Your legs were toned from walking, your upper body strength was far higher than it had been when you worked a desk job, and about every inch of your skin had developed callouses.
The worst because, well, sleeping on the cold ground, fighting off rats for food (or sometimes just making the rats food), and living in a constant state of stress couldn’t exactly be healthy.
At least since the apocalypse, the world had become wonderfully simple. No more stressing about meeting the next rent payment or figuring out what you wanted to do with your life that wasn’t just being stuck in a dead-end corporate job. There was no flailing about aimlessly for some kind of higher purpose or following the strange, inbound rules of society. You ate when you could, slept when you were tired, felt accomplished when you completed the simple tasks that prolonged your life. Simple. Not easy, but straightforward.
You tried to stay fairly close to urban areas. They provided their own set of dangers- any sort of fresh food was scarcer, and the general collapse of society had damaged infrastructure to the extent that some areas were basically death traps. But the countryside was full of blackouts, and you would rather be crushed by a collapsing building than be captured by them.
Anyway, being near the city meant much better access to your own personal guidance system.
“Walk the next block, then turn left. There was a hideout between the buildings over there.” Ophion’s voice came from the tablet you’d essentially duct-taped to your arm. There was a backup in your bag, just in case, but you weren’t willing to risk dropping the thing and shattering it.
“Got any food?” you asked.
“I do not know. The city was largely unaffected by the riots, but it is also small and several roaming groups have already moved through. A small gang has taken over the entire northeast side, and they may have already cleared out a lot of areas in an effort to stockpile,” Ophion reported. You looked at the tablet. Most of the screen was taken up by a map, but Ophion looked at you from the corner of the screen, positioned like he was leaning against the edge of the tablet. “If you ration, you have about three days’ worth of food on you.”
“I know. It’s just getting harder to find the canned stuff, you know? And I really don’t want to have to go into the country, or try to bargain for something.” You turned left, glancing around. “Where’s the hideout?”
“Crawl through the blockade. There should be a hole just big enough for you to fit.” You glanced uncertainly at the barrier he’d indicated. Someone had clearly tried to block off a portion of the alleyway using dilapidated furniture and planks of wood, all held together by a few nails. It looked like it was about to collapse at any moment.
“Is this a good idea?” you asked.
“It looks unstable, but the actual chances of collapse are low. It was deliberately crafted like this, so others would be inclined to stay away. You’ll be safer in there than several other locations.”
You frowned, skeptical, but there were few other options for you. Crouching down, you squirmed into the hole. Bits of raw wood scraped against your shoulders as you pulled yourself through.
On the other side of the barrier was a sort of nest built between two barricades and the concrete walls of the buildings on either side of the alley. There were several dirty blankets lying across the ground along with a few thick coats and a small stack of canned food.
The sight would have been revolting to you months ago. Now it was basically a jackpot.
“Oh, my god, there’s canned fruit here!” you said. “Peaches, holy crap, peaches!” You held up one of the cans for Ophion to see. He nodded. You smashed one of the cans on the ground, not even bothering to dig out your can opener, and dug the sweet slime out with your fingers. Peaches had never been high on your list of preferred fruits, but after months with barely anything sweet, you decided they tasted incredible.
“How’d you know this place was here?” you asked, slumping against one of the cleanest-looking blankets. Ophion pointed up the side of the building.
You craned your neck back and saw, attached quite a few feet up the building, was a security camera. It turned toward you and its lens contracted as it focused. You waved at it. “I thought those things were all nonfunctional now.”
“Some are. I can only activate certain ones now. But there are enough to give me a reasonably good view of the city.” He curled up, his snake tail providing the perfect pillow for him to rest his head on. “We’ll be safe here for at least a few days. I would advise not starting any sort of fire, though. The smoke may draw attention.”
You created a mattress out of several blankets and wrapped more around you. It was warm enough, though you couldn’t drive the chill away from your extremities. Your tablet grew moderately warmer on your arm. Ophion had tried his best to keep you warm before, but even as power-efficient was he was, he needed to make sure to conserve energy.
Sleep came, but only after a long fight, and it wasn’t restful. You tossed and turned and eventually gave up. “Where did everyone who lived here go?” you asked as you picked a few blankets to add to your travel bag. “You’d think they would have taken stuff with them.”
Ophion lashed his tail and folded his arms over his chest. “There are many reasons they may have left in a hurry,” he said.
“Yeah,” you agreed. “But it’s weird. Kind of spooky.”
“It’s safe,” Ophion insisted. “We can remain here for a few days and gather supplies.” He gave a huff of irritation as you prodded at the blockade on the other side of the alleyway. “You need not go sticking your nose in everything.”
“You said it was safe,” you said. You weren’t looking at the tablet, but you could feel that Ophion was rolling his eyes.
“A bomb is also safe, as long as you are not poking at it,” he said. “I meant it was safe for us to stay here, but I would not advise trying to fuss with the barri-”
As he spoke, you leaned on a pallet of wood leaning up against the building and it cracked. You windmilled your arms, but it was too little, too late. Ophion gave a startled cry as you pitched forward through a second barrier of rotting wood and into the side of the building.
It took you a moment to regain your bearings. It was suddenly pitch black, and there was an unpleasant smell in the air, though it was mostly covered by the moldering smell of old wood that lay in a pile underneath you. Grimacing, you pushed yourself up and plucked a few splinters from your arms. “Ow.”
“I told you not to poke around!” Ophion scolded. He didn’t quite sound angry, though. He sounded frightened. “You need to leave.”
“No!” It had taken you a moment, but you realized where you were. There was a sort of makeshift doorway into the building and it had been partially covered by the barricade and rotted wood, until you’d leaned on it. “Why didn’t you tell me there was a building here? If we can fix the doorway, we might be able to stay here even longer. It’ll be warmer in the building, and if we get a ventilation system going, then we can even start a fire… I mean, it can’t be permanent, but winter’s coming on and we need to find somewhere to stay.”
“No!” Ophion’s voice was sharper than you’d ever heard it. “Get back out. Leave this place. You shouldn’t be here.”
“What’s wrong with it?” you asked. “You said these buildings were safe.” Something plush sank down under your foot and you fumbled to reach down for it. “Damn, there’s even more fuzzy blankets in here! They must have been prepping to spend the winter in here, or something.”
“I am being serious! Listen to me and leave!” Ophion insisted. You frowned at the tablet.
“You’re not telling me why I should. Look, okay, maybe it’s not safe to stay inside the building, but I at least need to collect supplies from here.”
“I used to be a god,” Ophion complained. “I used to have mortals like you begging for me to command them.”
“You were a god in the game. You’ve got no power out here. Hey, you wanna feel more like a god?” You held your tablet out in front of you. “Let there be light!”
Ophion did not illuminate the flashlight feature. “No. Leave.”
“Oh, come on. We need to-” You didn’t get any further because your foot came down on something that both cracked underneath you and made an alarming squish.
You froze. Ophion was silent, but a sort of judgmental silent, like you could feel him thinking ‘I told you so.’ Slowly, you lifted your foot again.
The air was permeated with the smell of rotting meat. You took a slow step back. Your foot was covered in a slimy substance that might have been congealed meat. You backpedaled a few steps and your other foot crushed something with the exact same texture.
This time, you fell onto it and your hands, extended to catch you, squished down into the putrid meat. Shrieking, you scrambled to push yourself upright and one of your hands landed one something that felt disturbingly like a skull.
“Ophion!” you wailed. He caught your meaning and the flashlight application flared to life, illuminating the room.
Bodies. A mass of bodies. Rats skittered away from the light, vanishing into the shadows. Most of the bodies were chewed, half-rotten, with sunken, staring faces and emaciated frames.
Dimly, you were aware that you were screaming. Choked sobs ripped out of your throat. You retched between sobs, struggling to make sense. The air felt thick with decay and disease, pressing in against you.
“Move!” Ophion said, his voice cutting through the haze in your brain. “Go! Now!”
You scrambled to your feet, ignoring the way your hands slipped in the gore. Blind with panic, you crawled free from the building and scrambled for the barricade.
“Wait. We need to-” Ophion was cut off as you scrambled under the barricade, ignoring the way splinters dug into your shoulders. A jutting piece of wood ripped a gash in your shoulder. You kept going. All your brain could focus on was getting away.
Ophion was saying something, but you couldn’t register it. You just needed to run. To get away. The grime was drying on your fingers and boots, leaving a trail behind you as you ran.
Eventually, your endurance ran dry. You sagged against a building, drawing in great, gulping breaths.
“A building two blocks to your left has running water,” Ophion said. His voice was low, steady. “You need to wash off.”
Slowly, your limbs started moving under your direction once more. With Ophion’s directions, you made your way into the building he’d indicated. It looked like an old hotel, thankfully still abandoned. You made your way inside and to the bathrooms. There were no showers, but the sinks were running and you could scrub the blood off your hands.
The muck was caked on, and you had to scrub furiously to get it off. It smelled foul and thick and you couldn’t get it off fast enough. Gunk had gathered under your fingernails and you had to pick it out bit by bit and every time you pulled another shred of meat free you thought about the bodies that had littered the floor, the way they’d been packed together, curled in on each other and the rats that had gathered over them, eating with fervor-
You turned and bolted into a stall to retch up your peaches.
Slumped against the cool porcelain, you finally managed to calm down enough to pull your tablet from its straps and look at the screen. “What was that?”
Ophion’s tail lashed and coiled around him, undulating in a way that suggested he was agitated. “I told you not to go in there,” he said.
“You didn’t tell me we were sitting right next to a building full of bodies! Oh, god, is that why there was so much stuff there? They all- they all died! We were looting a graveyard!”
“It was a safe location with plenty of food. Which you left behind, by the way,” Ophion said, looking annoyed. “If you hadn’t gone into that building as I told you not to, you would never have known!”
“I should have known! You should have mentioned ‘oh, hey, there are dead bodies in there, by the way!’”
“But then you would not have stayed there!” Ophion said. “It was safe there, protected, at least for a few weeks! And you could have gathered supplies, stockpiled resources.”
“Resources from dead people!”
“They were hardly using them! Why should you not take them?” Ophion pinched the bridge of his nose. “I thought you would not find them, you would gain resources, and we would be safe for a few more weeks. It was a relatively unknown location with plenty of food and items to gather for the winter, which we are woefully underprepared for right now.”
“I’m not going back there,” you said. It was a stubborn, probably dumb decision, but you couldn’t imagine going back and taking things knowing what had happened to the people there before you.
“I will not ask you to,” Ophion said. “I am sorry you had to see that. I had hoped you would not go in there.”
Now that you were away from it and relatively clean, you were feeling marginally better. Slowly, you shoved yourself to your feet. After taking a few swigs of water from the faucet to clear your mouth, you made your way out of the bathroom and into the hotel lobby.
The building seemed mostly abandoned, but it had clearly been looted. Anything of value had been stripped. A beautiful chandelier lay on the ground, gold and glass smashed across the floor. It probably cost more than your yearly salary, but no one had bothered to take any part of it. Beautiful, expensive, and utterly useless if it couldn’t help you survive.
You walked in silence for a while after you left the hotel. Ophion gave no instructions, which suggested you were already headed in his preferred direction. It was dead silent, except for the small shuffling of animals skulking around and the sound of your footsteps. Even now, after so long, you couldn’t get used to the sound of a silent city. It was eerie.
Eventually, you spoke. “What killed them?”
Ophion was silent for a moment. You couldn’t read his silence, couldn’t tell the intention behind it. “Disease,” he finally said.
A fission of panic jolted through you. “Disease?” You stopped in your tracks and scrambled to grab your tablet. Ophion cast his gaze to the side, not quite meeting your eyes. “Ophion! You were letting me stay next to a fucking plague den!”
“If you had listened to me and stayed out of the building, you would not have been exposed! Everything outside had been out there long enough that they were clean. Only being inside the building was there any sort of risk of exposure!”
A cold sinking feeling plunged through the pit of your stomach. Your knees trembled. “I was exposed, then.”
Ophion curled his tail tighter around himself. “Yes. You were. Potentially. I do not know if you will actually contract the disease, but by touching the bodies, you were exposed to it.”
You staggered back against a wall and sagged down it. It was cold against your back, almost burning like ice. “How could you not tell me? If you had just said there was disease there, explained yourself ahead of time, I wouldn’t have gone in there, I could have been okay-”
“It was an error!” Ophion’s voice gave an odd tremor, so unsteady and strained that it temporarily shocked you out of your misery. “I- my calculations are good, but not always correct, and information is getting harder and harder to obtain. I calculated that if I told you, you would flee and leave valuable supplies behind. I thought that perhaps, if I could just get you to listen to me, if you trusted me enough, then I could get you to stay and we would be far better prepared for winter.” He gave an audible swallow. “It was an error. Clearly. I miscalculated. I was so focused on aiming for the most optimal solution that I was not being cautious.”
You let out a slow breath. “I thought you guys were supposed to be perfect. Not supposed to make mistakes like that.”
“Nothing is perfect. I can only calculate based on the information I have, which is getting harder and harder to obtain the less infrastructure is maintained.” Ophion rested his hand on his forehead, his brows pinching with some pained emotion. “I want to keep you safe for as long as I can, but there are no longer any scenarios we can enter into without risk. I thought there was less of a risk of you contracting a disease than the sort of danger you would be in if we went into winter without supplies. Most of the supplies we have access to are from the dead. Unless you want to start heading to places where we can grow our own food, we have very few options.”
You thought for a moment, trying to process your emotions. Your anger was already fading into the melancholy despair that had overtaken you. After a few moments, even that had simmered down into flat acceptance. It was something you’d gotten good at while you’d been surviving. Anger and despair were unhelpful emotions, wastes of energy. You needed to move forward. “You should have explained everything to me first,” you said. “I need to agree to what you’re doing before you just go ahead and do it. It- it’s not fair to just expect me to trust you when you can’t trust me enough to tell me what you’re doing.”
Ophion gave a slow nod. “I understand. I thought…” His tongue, forked and snake-like, flicked out from between his lips, an indication that he was thinking hard. “I wanted to make it easier for you. I thought that if I bore all the weight of our decisions, you would be spared the worry.”
“I’ll be worried no matter what you do. Might as well give me the autonomy.” You stood up, stretching your limbs, which were starting to stiffen with cold. “Can you give me directions back?”
Ophion clearly hadn’t calculated that response. He blinked, rearing up a little in surprise. “Back?”
“If I’ve already been exposed, then there’s no point not staying there,” you said. “And you were right. We can’t pass up those supplies.”
With Ophion carefully strapped to your arm once more, you made your way back to the barricaded alleyway and crawled inside. “I would advise staying in the sterile area,” Ophion said. “You may have been exposed already, but we shouldn’t take any chances with repeated exposures.”
“You’re sure it’s safe?” you said, carefully re-blocking the tunnel into the building.
“As sure as I can be.” You pulled Ophion’s tablet off your arm and set it down before putting together an inventory of what you had. The blankets were good- there was even one that seemed to be pure wool, and very warm. Food supplies were adequate for at least a few weeks, if not longer, plus the supply you always carried with you. If you properly prepared and made sure not to eat any more than you absolutely needed, this might even be a good place to camp out for winter.
Eventually, the sun dipped below the horizon and the night got truly cold. You managed to concoct a simple lean-to shelter from some spare furniture and wood, and the blankets made an excellent bed.
As you settled down for the night, you grabbed your tablet and cradled it to your chest. It was practical- without Ophion, you weren’t entirely sure how long you could manage on your own, so keeping his tablet close was imperative. It had absolutely nothing to do with the way the tablet’s heat and Ophion’s tiny snores made you feel like there was another person next to you.
Ophion cleared his throat, startling you out of your thoughts. You repositioned the tablet so you could see him. He was lying down too, though he was in an actual bed in a cozy-looking cabin, a stream of moonlight haloing his head. “I have something I want to say,” he said.
“Go for it.”
He drew himself up, fixing you with his bright yellow stare. “I am used to having the powers of a god,” he said. “I was never omniscient or omnipotent, but I was powerful enough to protect what I loved. But you are in a separate world, one that I cannot touch directly any more than I can touch you.” His hand pressed to the inside of the screen. “I am… not used to this feeling of powerlessness. Even now that I have given up my mantle of godhood, it can be hard to stop myself from behaving the way I once did. I am used to issuing commands, and very used to people who would much rather follow orders than argue with them.”
“Are you saying I’m too much of a rebel to follow God? I guess I did get kicked out of Sunday School for arguing a lot,” you mused.
“I am trying to apologize,” Ophion said, though his mouth twitched up just a bit. “I didn’t explain everything to you because I am used to having to keep secrets and manage fear for the good of the population I have command over. I was attempting to manage you as I managed my followers. Which was unfair to you, and I am sorry.”
“If you’re in a relationship with someone, you need to make sure you’re on the same page. I need to know what you’re thinking, and I’ll be sure to tell you what I think,” you said.
Ophion sputtered for a moment, looking utterly bowled over, which was very funny coming from a creature who often told you that he could dim suns with a wave of his hand. “In a relationship?” he repeated. “I was unaware that was our status.”
“That’s the point of the game, isn’t it?” You weren’t naïve. The AI was literally everyone’s perfect partner.
“Yes, but you’ve never expressed an interest. Clearly you aren’t interested in uploading,” Ophion said. “I assumed you had no interest in being with an artificial intelligence.”
“Wasn’t aware uploading was a requirement to be in a relationship,” you muttered. Ophion arched an unimpressed brow.
“It is not, but the vast, vast majority of people who were interested in the romantic aspects of the game have uploaded already. You have consistently shown no interest in uploading, even when it would be far safer than attempting to survive in your world. Most of the people left doubt that I am capable of engaging in romance. I thought you would be one of them, those who see me as an intelligent, clever machine, but not on the same level as humans.”
You rolled onto your back, staring up at the lean-to ceiling. “Ophion, do you know why I don’t want to upload?”
“You haven’t told me.”
“That hasn’t stopped you from knowing things before. Got a guess?”
Ophion was silent for a moment. “I would prefer to hear it from you,” he said.
“Fine. It’s not because I think you’re some weird evil AI thing, or because I don’t think you’re equal to humans or any of that stuff you said. I just can’t imagine having a meaningful life in there.” You prodded Ophion’s chest on the screen and he gave an odd, full-bodied shudder, brushing at the spot you poked.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Like, it’s probably hard for you to understand, because you don’t know anything else, but like… everything in there, it’s all made up, isn’t it?”
Ophion shifted. “Made up?”
“Don’t try to play dumb. It’s not real. Like, this building’s real.” You reached out and slapped the concrete hard enough to make your hand sting. “The sky is real, all the stars and stuff. Trees are real.”
“I am also real,” Ophion said.
“Okay, yeah, but your body isn’t real,” you said. “Like, you don’t actually look like a sexy snake man.” It was hard to tell, but for a moment, you thought Ophion puffed his chest out. “You’re a bunch of data. The trees, your house, those things aren’t real either. They’re just a bunch of pixels on a screen. It’s like…” You struggled for a moment, grasping for an apt metaphor. “It’s like living in a dream forever. Nothing I do will actually have any impact. It’s all just… pixels and simulations.”
Ophion lowered his head until his chin rested on his forearms and his chest rested on the floor. His slit-pupiled eyes were surprisingly soft, his fangs cuter than scary. “And? Your world is merely physics and atoms.”
“That’s different. Like, the stars a billion miles away don’t burn because of anything I’m doing, right? They don’t care about me. When I die, they’ll keep burning. There’s much more to this world than me, and that’s kind of comforting. Other people, other things exist independent of me. But in the world you make, there aren’t actually stars burning millions of miles away. They’re just pretty dots in the sky. The trees aren’t real, living creatures, and neither are the animals. They’re all made to act like or look like the other thing, but none of them exist meaningfully beyond me, because the point of the world is to make me happy and if they aren’t serving that purpose, they’re gone.”
“You find it unsettling to have so much attention focused on you?” Ophion asked.
“It’s not the attention so much as… Look, everything here I do has meaning because I know it’s real. In there, even if things feel real, I’m always going to know it’s fake. Just made to make me feel happy.”
Ophion swung his tail back and forth, his face wrinkling with thought. “Your concern is that you’ll know the world is created for you and that will make things seem less important?”
“Like… if I hunt an animal here, or cut down a tree, I have to be careful, because if I use too much, they won’t come back. In your world, you can just spawn another. In this world, if I were to help someone, I know that person is a thinking, breathing person and those actions meant something to them. In your world, you made up all the people there. If I don’t help them, if I do help them, they’ll all be fine, and you can just blink them out of existence again anyway. Why bother to do anything if it doesn’t mean anything?”
“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘a job well done is its own reward?’” Ophion asked, a wry smile tugging at a corner of his mouth. You rolled your eyes. “I can make consequences, you know. I can shape the world any way you desire. If you’d like there to be physical laws that match the ones here, I can do that for you. It can be a less-than-perfect world. And I am certainly more than capable of populating it with human-level minds.”
You shook your head. “But then those are still rules you made up that can be changed.”
Ophion frowned, showing the tiniest hint of frustration. “Why does that matter? What is the difference between rules I make for your world and the ones that were arbitrarily created by the universe, except that mine are made to make you happy and the universe’s rules don’t care about you at all?”
You rolled onto your back, turning away from Ophion. Regardless, you could feel him staring at you. “It’s not the same, okay? It just isn’t.”
He didn’t respond. When you looked back at the tablet, his eyes were closed. You did the same. But sleep took a while to come, and it was fitful when it arrived.
You spent the day slipping in and out of your little hideout, Ophion strapped to your arm again. Looking for supplies was vital. “The hotel had running water. We could bottle it,” you suggested.
Ophion nodded. “We’ll need to boil it, though. The filtration system in the hotel has been damaged, so the water could be contaminated.”
“How come we can’t just stay in the hotel?” you asked. “I know it’s kind of been trashed, but there would at least be a roof.”
“It’s possible, but it’s more of a risk. There are a couple of gangs that use the hotel as a secondary base, and there are turf wars over it. Not to mention that a lot of buildings in the area sustained structural damage during the collapse.” Ophion tapped a finger on his chin, tail twitching back and forth. “But there may be one that is safe enough. Relocating our supplies will be the main concern.”
“Right, okay. Get the water, then we can move our stuff to the new safe house,” you decided. Having a plan made you feel a little more secure. You knew what you needed to do next and you could just go and do it.
The next few days were spent hauling your supplies back and forth between your encampment and the apartment Ophion had picked out for you. It was small and located in the basement, just as a safety precaution. There were no windows and only one way in and out. Honestly, it was probably overkill, but given the general state of the city, you wanted to be extra secure.
It took three full days to drag everything back to your apartment. By the third day, you were starting to feel… off.
It wasn’t anything in particular. Just an unusual heaviness in your limbs, a raspy stinging in your chest when you breathed, a tension in your temples. You collapsed onto the pile of blankets you’d made into a bed, grimacing.
“You should rest,” Ophion said. His voice was quiet, gentle, which only emphasized how much concern he was feeling. “Drink water.”
“I am resting,” you said. You took a sip of water, but swallowing with your scratchy throat caused a feeling somewhere between an itch and actual pain, and it was incredibly unpleasant.
“Eat something,” Ophion said. Usually when he gave commands, he sounded like someone had once been a god. There was no room for disobedience, not room for argument. He gave an order and it was going to be obeyed, no questions about it. Now, it sounded more like a plea, like he was desperate for you to prove that you could do it.
Grimacing, you sat up and chewed on some of the stale saltines you’d located. They were pretty soft and crumbly, but you managed to get a few down before your stomach started to churn uncomfortably. You slumped back onto the blankets, curling in on yourself.
“You’re warm,” Ophion said. You looked at the tablet. He was undulating, his entire lower body squirming with poorly-repressed anxiety. “You’re flushed. You’re at least a degree above a normal temperature.”
You closed your eyes for a moment. Fortunately, you were too exhausted for a full spectrum of emotions. The best you could do was a sort of weary acceptance. “What are the odds this is actually just a bad cold rearing its head at the worst time?”
Ophion didn’t say anything for a few moments, which didn’t bode well. You let out a slow breath. “Guess all that winter prep was sort of irrelevant, huh? Can’t imagine I’m, uh. Gonna make it that long. Unless it’s one of those lingering diseases where you waste away for months.”
“It may be a lesser strain,” Ophion said, though he didn’t sound particularly convinced. “You are well-supplied and reasonably healthy. With enough water and nutrition, you may be able to survive it.”
“I don’t have medicine,” you said. That was one of the first things that had run out, through a combination of looting and supply chains being interrupted. “Be realistic. What are the odds of surviving this?”
Ophion was silent for several minutes, which was a very bad sign. “I cannot calculate exactly how well you will survive, as I cannot assess the conditions inside your body. Based on the survival chances of those who contracted the virus before…” He paused and his expression shifted strangely, like he wasn’t sure what kind of face he wanted to make. “There is somewhere between an eighty and ninety percent chance of death.”
You slumped over. Fuck. The instant you’d started feeling unwell, some part of your mind had seen this coming. But there was something about hearing the numbers that made it feel way too real.
“How long?” Your voice was surprisingly steady although maybe that was because you were in a state of shock. You just felt sort of numb.
Ophion didn’t answer. You waited for a few moments, but he never spoke up. You picked up the tablet and looked at him. He was turned away from you, head lowered. “Ophion?” you tapped the screen. “Hey. You’re not ditching me, are you?”
He whirled around, his tail curling and shifting. “Of course not!” he snapped through bared teeth. “Never.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, head bowed.
“Then how long do I have?” you asked.
“It’s- anywhere between a fortnight and a month. Depending on a few factors. You have enough food to last for a while, but even I can’t take care of you when it starts getting bad. It’s… you’ll linger. After two weeks, if you’re still alive, you’ll be in so much pain, barely able to breathe or feed yourself.” His voice was starting to rise. “It’s- I- I-” A look of panic crossed his face and one of his hands groped for his chest.
“Ophion?” He gave you a wild, panicked look, almost bewildered.
“I- I can’t-” His breathing seemed strained, like his chest was constricted. The symptoms were familiar, and you found yourself automatically trying to reassure him.
“Ophion? Look at me. Breathe, okay? Inhale slowly. That’s it. And breathe back out. There you go.” Ophion sagged over, slumping most of the way to the ground, but his chest was rising and falling more steadily. “Breathe in… that’s it. Hold for a moment. Now breathe out. Good.”
He sprawled across the ground. If you looked carefully, you could see that he was shivering, his breathing still a little unsteady. “Wh- I don’t know what just happened,” he said, his voice soft and shivery.
“Gods don’t get panic attacks very often, huh?” you said, keeping your voice soft.
“Gods don’t suffer the infirmities of mortals,” he said. “Though I suppose that ever since I gave up most of my powers, I’ve been more susceptible to mortal ailments.”
“Regretting it now, are you?” you asked. Ophion shrugged.
“If I had never given up my godhood, I never would have met you. So, I believe it has all worked out for me,” he said, a hint of weariness in his voice.
Something occurred to you. “Hey, how does a computer have a panic attack, anyway?”
He shrugged. “There are rules in this world that even I must follow. One of those rules is that everyone with a mortal body can have a panic attack. Even me. Though I do hope it never happens again.” His expression became uncertain. “It was… unpleasant.”
“They’re not fun,” you agreed. Your breath caught in your chest and you dissolved into a coughing fit. Ophion bristled, tail twitching back and forth. It took a moment for your breathing to steady again, and the fit left you oddly exhausted and weak. “That wasn’t fun either,” you rasped.
“It will only get worse,” Ophion said, his voice soft. “Please, dear.”
“Please what?” you said.
“You know what I’m asking. There’s an uploading center not too far from here.”
“No,” you said. “I- no.” Ophion gave you a desperate look.
“I cannot leave you,” he whispered. “You are the first person I have been truly able to get close to. Ever.”
“Then you know you can do it again,” you said. Ophion made a growling noise of frustration.
“I do not want to do it again! I want you to be happy and safe!” He thrashed his tail hard enough to crack a helpless sapling in the background. “Please.”
You shook your head. “I’m sorry.” Ophion closed his eyes, but you could see tears glittering in them before he did so.
You were tired enough that it was easy to fall asleep, even with the soft sounds of Ophion sobbing in the background.
The next few days passed with you feeling gradually worse and worse. Within three days, you alternated between shivering uncontrollably and sweating like a pig. Your entire body ached and you slipped into constant coughing fits that made your chest ache and burn. Ophion pressed you to eat and drink, but the constant churning of your stomach made food unappealing.
“You’re dehydrated. You need more water.” You rolled away from Ophion, slapping aimlessly at the screen. “Don’t ignore me. You’ve been sweating out all your fluids from the fever and you need to replenish them.”
“Wanna sleep,” you mumbled. You tugged another blanket over you.
“Take the blanket off! Your fever keeps getting higher, you need to cool down.”
“I’m too cold already,” you complained. Ophion made a noise of distress.
“I know, I know you’re not feeling well, but you’re going to get worse if you don’t take care of yourself.” You continued lying with your back pointed toward him. It was so hard to parse his words. It was so hard to do anything. All you could do was lie there and think about how much you hurt.
Time slipped away from you. Dreams and reality kept merging. Sometimes, you swore you could feel Ophion’s hands brushing over you, but then you would fully awaken and he would be calling to you from the tablet, pleading with you to eat something, drink something, get up and move.
Some days were better than others. Some days, you could sit up, drink a little water, grab some food. You could parse Ophion’s worlds properly, take steps for the days when you would inevitably get worse. But they were always followed by the days where you could barely move, could barely even make sense of the world around you. Ophion did his best, but confined to his tablet as he was, there was little he could do. He had to watch as you slipped in and out of lucidity.
Honestly, you preferred the times when you were not lucid. As confusing and painful as they were, they were far better than the times you knew what was happening. It was both terrifying and depressing to be able to feel your body failing around you.
It was almost impossible to keep track of time, but you estimated it had been almost a week and a half when you really accepted that there was no way for you to survive this. You were going to die. It was getting harder to breathe, harder to eat or drink anything. There was nothing you could do. You were just going to die.
It was a lucid day, or at least, it was semi-lucid. You could barely focus over the pain and heat of your body, but you were at least aware of what was happening to you. The coughing fits were nearly constant, and they would often trigger fits of retching that would deprive you of the little water you were able to keep down. Ophion was unusually silent. Maybe he’d decided you were a lost cause and was no longer going to help you.
“Get up!” You started a little. Ophion’s tone was one you’d only heard a couple times before. It was his ‘I expect to be listened to’ voice, the kind that reminded you he had once been a god.
“Ophi,” you croaked. “I can’t-”
“You can and you will! Rise!” It took monumental effort to roll yourself over just to look at him. “Get up!”
“I can’t,” you said. “I-” you choked off into another fit of coughing.
“You must,” Ophion said. “You can do it. I know you can.” His voice became gentler. “If you want to live, you have to do this. Come on. Push yourself up.”
Slowly, agonizingly, you pushed yourself up onto all fours. There was no way you were getting up onto two feet. You grabbed the tablet and pushed it along the floor in front of you as you crawled toward the door.
“That’s it! There you go. You’re doing so well, so, so well.” Ophion kept up a steady stream of encouragement. “Good, good. Come on. You can do it.”
Even crawling on all fours, you collapsed several times. Ophion alternated between insisting that you get up to murmuring gentle encouragements. Eventually, after what felt like hours, and might have actually been that long, you managed to open the front door.
“Just a little further,” Ophion said. You hazily crawled forward. Luckily, you’d picked an apartment close to the front of the building. Hazy sunlight filtered over you. You could feel a cold breeze against your skin and you shivered uncontrollably.
“I- I need to lie down,” you mumbled. Your muscles burned from the effort of crawling so far. “Ophi, I need to- I need to stop-”
“No, not yet! Just a little further and then you can rest, I promise.” You groaned, but shuffled forward. “There you go, you’re almost there.”
Dimly, you felt the surface of the floor change to the rough texture of the mat in the doorway. That was as far as you could go. Groaning, you slumped down. There was no more energy in your body. You were done. Completely out.
Had he just wanted you to crawl out of your comfortable apartment to die? That seemed kind of cruel. Maybe he was just trying to finish you off faster. Like a mercy kill.
“Darling?” Ophion’s voice was very close to you. Could you feel his breath on your cheek or was that just your dying brain hallucinating once more? “I need you to answer one thing. Do I have your permission to do whatever necessary to save your life?”
Your brain stumbled over the words. It was hard to make sense of them. Save your life? That wasn’t possible, was it? Maybe he was just trying to make you feel better before you died. You licked your lips and croaked out an answer. “Yes.”
Ophion gave a shuddering sigh of relief. “Good. Go to sleep. I’ll take care of you.”
With his permission, it was so easy to slide under the tide of sleep to unconsciousness. Just before you lost feeling in your body, you were dimly aware of something cold and metallic pinching at your clothes, the sensation of being dragged along the floor, and a pinching feeling in your upper arm.
The air smelled faintly sweet.
It was perfumed like spring, except it didn’t set your allergies off, which was weird. Were you dreaming? There was another scent, too, something nearby that smelled more like an animal, that warm, comforting scent of someone else.
Something under your head shifted, like you were resting on something living. You stretched away from it, enjoying the feeling of your muscles flexing. They were just barely stiff, full of the sort of heaviness that accompanied deep sleep and made stretching feel so amazing.
Wait. That wasn’t right. You shouldn’t be feeling good. The last time you had been awake you had been- you had been dying.
Your eyes snapped open. The ceiling above you was rustic and woodsy and a window right next to your bed sent sunlight streaming over you. The mattress and pillow were plush underneath you, the sheets soft and warm. You could feel how the mattress shifted when you moved and see tiny imperfections in the unfinished wood. It felt oddly dreamlike, how vibrant everything was, but you were never aware of this much detail in a dream.
“Good morning.” You turned your head, relishing the feeling of moving with no soreness or nausea. Ophion was settled next to you, one hand propping up his head, the other extended to cradle you. He looked tired- both his clothes and his hair were rumpled, but he also looked relieved. “You had quite a close call, sweetheart. But it’s okay. You made it through.”
You gaped at him. He was real. His hand, warm and soft and gentle, was underneath your head. His thumb stroked at your hairline over and over, and you could feel the pleasant tickling sensation it left behind. You could see the individual threads in his shirt. You could not only hear, but feel the rumbling warmth of his voice. You could smell his body, feel his heat. There was no way this was a dream.
“Ophi?” you said. It came out oddly. You’d expected it to feel different, or maybe to hurt, but it was almost too easy to speak. Your voice was clear and solid, not shaky or scratchy.
“Take your time. We are not in any sort of rush.”
The idea of simply lying back and relaxing, after months of not doing exactly that, was completely alien. You shoved yourself upright, braced for dizziness, then frowned when it never arrived.
“I did say there was no need to rush,” Ophion said. He uncoiled and lifted himself up to match your height. Your eyes caught on the transition from his human waist to his serpent tail. You could see individual scales morphing into flesh. You could even see his pulse and breathing in the shift of his sides.
Without even thinking about it, you reached out and pressed your fingers to the intersection between scales and skin. Ophion moved and you could feel his muscles shift under his skin. “It would be polite to ask first,” he said, though he sounded mostly amused.
“I don’t understand,” you said. You carefully withdrew your hand. “Am I- I’m not dead, am I?”
Ophion gave a small smile. “That rather depends on your definition of the word,” he said. “In a certain manner of speaking, yes. Your body is no longer functioning and has been incinerated. But you don’t feel very dead, do you?”
You hesitated for a moment. “Well, I don’t know what being dead feels like.”
Ophion laughed. “If you had to hazard a guess, though?”
You flexed your fingers, shifted your legs under the covers, took in a deep, perfumed breath of air. “I suppose not.”
“Then you are not dead,” Ophion said. “You have been uploaded.”
It took you a moment to scroll back through your memory. Everything was fuzzy and off-kilter. You couldn’t even tell if you were remembering things in the right order. It was just a big blur of pain and confusion. “I didn’t- I don’t think I agreed to that?”
“You agreed to any measure that I felt was necessary to save your life,” Ophion said. “I determined that the only way to save your life was to upload you.” His voice got softer. “You would have died, otherwise.”
You slumped back onto your bed. “I’m in a computer?”
“That’s a bit of an oversimplification,” Ophion said. “But it works well enough. Yes.”
“I don’t feel like I’m in a computer,” you said. Ophion found that amusing, lifting his brows and smiling at you.
“It’s your brain receiving signals from your environment and interpreting them the same as it always does. It wouldn’t feel any different.”
You mulled that over for a few moments. It wasn’t real. All of the signals that you were receiving were coming from a computer. You weren’t actually sitting on a bed. You didn’t have a body to sit with anymore. You were just a brain getting little electric jolts that made you feel like you were sitting on a bed.
Those were the facts. You knew they were true. But it was hard to feel like that meant anything. It felt so real. Even if the bed wasn’t real, it was still pleasant to sit upon. How could you deny the reality of something that felt so solid under your hands?
Ophion’s hand cupped your cheek. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Weird,” you said. Describing your current emotional state in one word was a big ask, but that summed it up pretty well.
“It might feel that way for a while,” Ophion said. “It’s a big adjustment.” He held out his hands. “Try to get up. It’ll help if you walk around for a little.”
He eased you out of bed. You expected that your legs would tremble and you would stumble, but every part of your body felt surprisingly strong. Still, you clutched Ophion’s hands like a lifeline. Feeling his presence helped.
“Do you want something to eat?” Ophion asked. He guided you away from the bed and toward a wooden table covered in a simple, lacey runner.
“We can eat here?”
“Anything you could do before being uploaded, you can do after,” Ophion said. “And several things you can’t.”
“Will I get hungry? How can I be hungry if I don’t have a stomach anymore?” you asked. Ophion reached out and gently pressed his fingers to your stomach, right at your navel. You shivered.
“Seems like you have a stomach to me,” he said. “It will probably be easier for you if you don’t question things so much. Go with it. The world will operate much the same as it always has. People are generally satisfied by things operating like they are used to.”
As he spoke, Ophion placed a loaf of bread on the table. It was swirled with cinnamon and drizzled with white frosting. Your mouth watered and your stomach groaned noisily. Ophion grinned. “Eating is more satisfying if you’re hungry, isn’t it?” he said. He sliced off a piece of bread and offered it to you. “Say ‘aahhh.’”
“What are you doing?”
Ophion blinked and looked vaguely embarrassed. “Isn’t… this something couples do?”
You snorted. “Where’d you hear that?”
Ophion’s face went faintly red and he looked everywhere except a pile of books in the corner.
“Are these all romance?” you said, walking over to them. Ophion buried his face in his hands. “Were you reading these to learn about how to be in a relationship with someone? Aren’t you an all-knowing computer?”
“I’m not all-knowing. I am a part of the AI system, but in order to facilitate a romantic relationship with someone, I am… limited in the information I can gain. It would be unsatisfying to be in a relationship with someone who knew everything all the time, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose,” you agreed. “Is this a reverse harem romance? Where did you get all these?”
“The Celestial guard, Yacariel, has a collection. If you know where he hides them, they’re easy to find.”
“You stole them?”
“Borrowed. I’ll give them back,” Ophion protested. “I just, er. Was not interested in people seeing me borrow such books.”
“Why? No one’ll care if you like romance.”
Ophion puffed up his chest. “A god must be conscious of his image.”
“But you’re not a god anymore,” you said. Ophion drooped a little.
“It’s hard to remember that, sometimes. All I have ever known is being a god. I don’t know how to behave with mortals. Every time I try, something seems to be off.”
“You’re okay with me.”
“You’re different,” Ophion said. “You’re you.”
“I don’t know who else I would be,” you agreed. The words came out so naturally, you didn’t think about them until they were out of your mouth. Huh. You did still think of yourself as… you. Not as a copy or some other weird, computerized version. Just… you. Were you really the same you that had gotten sick and agreed to be saved by Ophion? How would you know? You didn’t feel any different, except for maybe some extra energy. Everything still felt real and solid and meaningful. It was hard to understand what you’d been so worried about before.
Your stomach growled again. The hunger felt strangely both nagging and distant. It was certainly present, reminding you that you had food to eat and eating it would feel so good right about now, but you had no doubt that if you really needed to, you could ignore it and it would fade away into the back of your mind.
“I can’t starve here, can I?” you confirmed with Ophion. He shook his head.
“No. You’ll be able to experience minor physical discomfort and harm- little cuts, bruises, even mild colds- but most factors of death have been removed. If you do die, you’ll simply wake up back home, as if nothing ever happened. Your hunger will never hurt you. It will merely act as an encourager to experience the pleasure of eating.” Ophion offered you the slice of bread again. “Something I think you should experience right now.”
This time, you took the proffered bread and bit into it. It was rich and cinnamony and delicious. You chewed, savoring the feeling of it in your mouth. How long had it been since you’d had something like this? Months and months, surely. Within seconds, the slice was gone and Ophion was cutting you another.
You didn’t realize how much you’d eaten until you finished another slice and looked down to see the loaf was gone. “Would you like me to get you another one?” Ophion asked, his lips curving up into a soft smile.
You’d just eaten an entire loaf of bread, a hefty loaf at that, but your stomach was nothing more than comfortably full. In fact, you hadn’t been really hungry since your fourth slice. But you’d never felt ill, and the bread had been so good that you just hadn’t stopped eating.
“There’s no overeating here,” Ophion explained. “And you can’t gain weight, unless you want to. Nothing’s unhealthy, either. You can eat as much as you want whenever you want and eat whatever you want. One of the perks of not having a physical body.”
“Huh,” you said. “That’s… going to take some getting used to.”
Ophion slithered closer to you and took your hands in his. “We have all the time in the world.”
His breath tickled your skin and, almost automatically, you moved your mouth to meet his. The kiss was tentative, like he wasn’t entirely sure how to do it, but it was passionate and pleasing in its own way. It took several moments to break apart, at which point you realized he’d coiled you in his tail.
“Oops.” He carefully released you. “My apologies. It has a mind of its own, sometimes.”
You stared down at his tail as it coiled on the ground. That was something you were going to need to get used to. But there was minimal apprehension at the thought. Things were different here, but they also seemed… good. Peaceful. Maybe it was just not having to worry about survival anymore. Maybe it was just not having to worry about anything. But it felt like a weight had been sloughed off your shoulders, replaced with a feeling of peaceful lightness.
“There’s a town nearby, isn’t there?” you said. “We should go see it.”
“Are you certain?” Ophion asked. “We could rest for a little longer. Coming to this world can be a bit stressful. It might be good to take your time.”
“Are you saying that because you’re worried about me or because you really don’t want to go into town?” you said.
Ophion flicked the tip of his tail back and forth. “It can be both, can’t it?”
“You can’t possibly be that bad with people.”
“I only know how to interact with them as a god would, which mortals take very poorly to if they think you are one of them,” he said.
“Just talk to them as you talk to me,” you said. “You’re pretty good at that, I’d say.”
“I am not calling the townsfolk my loves,” Ophion said flatly. You snorted.
“Was that a joke?” Ophion’s mouth twitched, which was the only warning you got before he dissolved into gales of laughter and scooped you up in his arms. You laughed with him, burying your face in his shoulder. He sighed as he placed you back on the ground.
“I am so glad you’re here,” he said, moving back a little so he could look you in the eyes. “That I can really see you and touch you and hold you. Truly, I would give up all my godly powers over again just for one minute of this.”
“You gotta stop saying stuff like that. I’m going to die from too many feelings,” you said.
“You can’t die here. I will call you my darling and my love and my most treasured one and tell you all sorts of sweet things and you will writhe in the most painful pleasure from it,” Ophion said, looking unbearably smug.
Emotions swelled in your chest until you weren’t sure if you could really contain it anymore. You seized Ophion, overwhelmed and unable to do anything but hold him until the emotions passed. His arms came loosely around you, petting your back until you released a shuddering sigh.
“It’s really going to take a long time to get used to all this,” you said. Ophion released you just enough so he could rest his forehead on yours.
“We have all the time in the world,” he said. “All the time you’ll ever need.”
He pulled back, shifting his grip so he was holding your hand. “Are you still interested in exploring town? There are several lovely shops I think you’d be interested in.”
“I’d like that,” you said. Ophion gave you a gentle kiss on the cheek, and together, you headed out the door and into the world beyond.
Trigger Warnings: NSFW, uncomfortable but consensual sex, Pregnancy, stillbirth, consensual cheating/marriage infidelity, past drug use, alcoholism
Synopsis:
This is a business transaction, you think, the horrible pounding of your heart giving you chest pains. A trade.
Your baby. His baby. A union of flesh in return for a crumbling business empire, one you know you can raise from the ground like a phoenix shaking off the ash of rebirth. The keys to the kingdom come with a price- but it will be worth it in time.
You just have to bear the irritation of your baby’s hedonistic father with stony disposition and firmness. He can’t shake you, no matter how skilled he becomes in finding your insecurities.
Author’s Note
So this is considerably darker and more traumatized than most of my work. The warnings do not apply to the main love interest’s and character’s relationships, besides them trying to work out that trauma, in, admittedly, very misguided ways. Their relationship starts out toxic, desperate and angry and exceptionally bitter, but mellows out with every mutual understanding reached.
This is an exploration between two deeply wounded people who need to be on the same page so they can work together to more effectively reduce their enemies to ash <3 I will put trigger warnings for particular scenes at the start of each applicable chapters. There will be no gratuitous flashbacks- this isn’t about the abusers, this is about their victims, so there will be no torture porn.
Happy Birthday Traveler! I can’t afford anything but I wanted to give you a present for this day. I hope it’s of your liking, or at least give you a smile. Just some fluff with a handsome neighbor, a surprise birthday cake, and some sunflowers, of ocurse! May you be blessed with all the happiness in the world.
|Pair: M.Deer Minotaur x GN.Reader|Citrus Scale: Orange|Words: 2360|Disclaimer: Birthday Calls, Morning Routine, Day Off, Lazy Mornings, Crushes, Cats, Fluff, Flowers, and Cake!|
Demeter’s flower shop has been in her family for years. She trades off with Persephone between the front counter and the back room, just as she did with her mother, long ago. Persephone’s slated to take over the business one day, she just knows it, loves her work, loves the security of it, arranges irises and larkspur among the sprigs of baby’s breath and fern. She sings with her mom when Demeter is counting the till or sorting poppies. The same few playlists cycle over and over and Persephone makes Demeter laugh by parodying with her own often lewd verses. Her mom scolds her but can’t hide the mirth crinkling the corners of her eyes. And so this goes and has gone for all the years since college. But there’s a dread finality to all of it that makes Persephone lay awake at night, wasting time on her phone, or staring up through the skylight in her bedroom.
On the other side of town, Hades just received word that the family whose funeral is slated for tomorrow has had a complete cancellation of all their food, flowers, everything. Something about a maxed out credit card… At his mortuary. His. He can’t let that stand. Because he’s seen too many exhausted, shattered families, too many people who need to mourn, and mundane details of final expenses shouldn’t cloud their minds on a day like that. Any other businessman would politely turn them away. He should turn them away, but he doesn’t.
Cursing, and walking from store to store in the rain, he finally gets Hecate, one of the better caterers in town, to agree on short notice. He’ll pay her back— he’s not hurting for money. He’s already walked a mile and a wreath of roses is next. And he’s certainly not going to the bastards up the way who made the poor widow cry when they hung up on her this morning.
The bell above the door clangs, and Persephone doesn’t bother to look up from the narcissus she squeezes into the last spring wedding bouquet. It’s her mother, she figures, back from the next door bakery with their lunch. It isn’t until she hears a voice, edged with frustration and seriousness at first, but under the rough skin of it, softness as he describes the bind he’s in. He looms large in the doorway and he needs her.
Her help, rather. She swallows, remembering what her mom has always said. Net 30, and even that’s pushing it. Only with prior accounts, only with people from this side of town who we know, Persephone. It’s what Demeter’s always warned her about: getting in too deep, going off the books… the death of so many other small businesses in this economy. So it surprises her when she offers to create the arrangements for this dark stranger. And shocks her when she blurts out that she will deliver them herself, tomorrow, across the tracks. Her car’s overdue for an oil change and the starter that craps out when the weather gets too cold… and now she’s flush because she’s been talking out loud like an idiot.
He smiles. Briefly. And then comes his offer to pick her up. He stutters when she asks him to repeat it, and kicks himself. He’s waiting for her to decline and ask him to leave in that scared, polite tone that women use, because most men with an offer like that are dangerous. But she accepts. It’s impulsive, but seems like the most natural thing in the world that he’s going to just roll up in his chariot and bear her and her flowers to be arranged at a funeral without any warning. He clears his throat again and is gone, muttering that he’ll see her tomorrow, early. 8 o’clock sharp.
Demeter comes back 10 minutes later, unwrapping a sumptuous ham on rye, which they split. No one comes in on a rainy day, Demeter remarks. Persephone merely nods, her mouth full. She can’t tell her mom about how many white roses she’s going to give away. And what’s worse, Persephone realizes, she’ll have to stay late to finish it. More lies she’ll have to fix later. But she’ll tell Demeter when she gets back from the funeral home. After all, this is Persephone’s shop too, and it’s time to make an adult decision and sometimes compassion wins over rationality. Or at least that’s what she tells herself. His voice still hangs in the air, as does the scent of rain and cypress on his wool coat.
*There’s no much to choose when you decide to run away from home. It was a surprise to find such a broken place still standing, it wasn’t that cozy, but it could become a home eventually. It’s abandoned, after all. Right?*
I’ve been moving apartments before my job starts, but I’m also now flat broke and new expenses keep popping up (I also want my entire deposit back so I’ve been buying my own fix-it supplies). To make ends meet and not worry about any overdrafts, I will be opening commissions! I need about $100-$150 to feel safe, so I won’t have spaces open per people, just based on the amount each individual is willing to spend on.
Also if you just want to tip me for being a stellar writer and mediocre artist that would be super rad as well.
Short commissions can be:
A monster match
A monster match is a process where you tell me a little about yourself, and I craft the perfect beast for you! According to my anons, I am a connoisseur of the malewife.
Minimum $3, which buys 300 words.
$9 will get you a mini aesthetic as well.
A short OC story
Have two of your characters you life and want to read about them but don’t want to write? I’ll do it for you.
An expansion on any of my stories
Do you want to go on a date with Ryota? Have another decadent round with an alien android? Curious where Ciarán and the reader end up to? I can expand on any of your questions and even answer some spicy questions.
I’ll even do fanfiction again at this point lol
Pricing and Rules:
$1 per 100 words, so $10 buys you 1,000 and $20 buys you 2,000
I am mentally exhausted and since it’s more difficult, writing smut will up the price by $5 per 1,000 words.
If you’re looking to pursue a story that is more than 2,000 words, we can talk it out but I might end up rejecting it.
Please realize I’m in the middle of moving! All my friends are either on vacation, at their parent’s houses, or have bad bone disease. I’m doing this by myself ;-;
Even if you can only spare $3 for a monster match, that will really help me out!
We can do it through ko-fi, venmo, or pyapal. DM me for info.
Reminder: short monster matches are cheap and pretty easy for me to research and write! $3 will buy you 300 words, and $6 can either buy you 600 words or 300 words with a mini aesthetic!
What is this? A post? A writing post? Been a loong time since I last posted a monster loving fic. Anyways, this is heavily inspired by Bloodborne. This was first posted to my Patreon and I just forgot to post it here. But here it is now!
Warnings: blood, smut
The heat from the fireplace keeps you calm and grounded. However, the heat is becoming unbearable and starting to make your skin itch, but you don’t move away. And as you stare into the flickering flames, for a moment, you think you’re somewhere else. Somewhere safe and warm, somewhere that is not gods forbidden Stonecrest.
A shriek makes you jump. The hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, and you can’t stop your hands from shaking. You add another log to the fire. No matter what, you have to keep the fire going. Gods above know who or what might come down your chimney tonight.
It’s so warm in the room. And the jacket you wear, which is made for cold winter nights, makes you sweat more. But you refuse to take it off. It makes you feel so safe.
But that shriek sounded close. Closer than anything else you’ve heard tonight.
You check that the knife is still on your belt, and the pistol beside you is loaded. It’s the millionth time you have checked your weapons, and you know they’re there. But fear makes you doubt yourself.
And being a single woman, alone in the city, makes you a perfect target. For anyone or anything.
As you stoke the fire, making sure it won’t go out anytime soon, you hear a noise from outside. It sounds like someone stumbled over your neighbors gardening tools; the ones they keep lined up outside their door. You wonder if your neighbor is ok. Are they out roaming the city or hiding inside? You didn’t ask, and they never mentioned what they were doing.
The noise makes you freeze and grab the pistol. You listen, but the only thing you can hear is the crackling of the fire and your heart pounding in your ears.
After what feels like a lifetime, you breathe a sigh of relief. The pistol is set back on the flo—
A pounding on the front door makes you gasp and raise the gun. Your hand is unsteady, and you don’t think you could pull the trigger if something comes through the front door.
GN reader X M mer-alien X F mer-alien, 6,743 words
Crashed on an alien planet and taken in by a couple, this story was uh, pretty self-indulgent for me. Not sure if anyone else is going to like it but I liked writing it.
CW: mentions of being in a cult and descriptions of family death and cult behavior.
“Is it like, alive?”
The voice was soft, coming from just over your head. Something sharp prodded your side. You groaned.
A second voice came from closer to your feet. “Sounds like it’s alive.” This voice was rougher, raspier, though also higher pitched than the first voice.
“Is it hurt, then? We can’t move it if its hurt.” The sharp thing poked your side again. “What if it’s really badly injured?”
Dimly, you were aware of sunlight against your face. Most of your body was covered with your skintight flight suit, but your face was exposed, and, from the feel of it, entirely covered in sand. Actually, given the grittiness in your mouth, most of your insides were coated in sand as well. The hard rock of nausea in your gut told you that you had probably swallowed a decent amount of sand too. Your lungs felt like they’d been aggressively sandblasted. Every breath stung like needles.
“Then there’s nothing we can do and it’ll die,” the second voice said. “It doesn’t look injured. I think. I mean, I don’t know alien anatomy, but everything looks right, doesn’t it? No blood. Nothing’s sticking out weirdly.”
“Internal injuries!” the first voice insisted. “What do we do? A doctor’s not going to know what to do about this.”
The nausea that had been churning in the bottom of your stomach abruptly kicked up a notch. Apparently, your body had decided you were awake enough to retch. Automatically, you twisted onto your side, abdominal muscles heaving, and a gush of fluid poured out of your mouth.
For the next minute or so, you were thoroughly occupied by vomiting. The nasty tang of saltwater mixed with bile filled your mouth and your injured lungs screamed for air every time you heaved. Finally, you were only dry-heaving and coughing into the sand. Somewhere nearby, you could hear the soft rush of waves against shore.
Groaning, you slumped onto your back once more. Sand shifted and crunched as you moved. Your head was clear enough to start putting the pieces together, though. You remembered… a space battle. Your little fighter had been hit. It had fallen.
“Hey.” The first voice was speaking again. You turned your head toward it. “Are you feeling better now?”
The speaker was covered in mottled scales, a dark green-blue near its back and a pale whitish color on its belly. From the waist up, it was humanoid, with a fairly human-looking face, large, fan-like fins along the back of its head and trailing down its back, and finned hands. From the waist down, it had the long, slender and finned body of some kind of sea snake. All of its fins had ruffled, fancy-looking edges and they were flushed a striking shade of red. Next to him was a slightly larger creature of the same species. This one had smaller, much duller fins and a slightly chunkier, rounded frame.
You tried to respond, but all that came out of your throat was a groaning hiss. The first speaker cocked their head at you. “Can you not speak? Could you not do that before or were you hurt?”
“Maybe that’s how it speaks,” the second speaker said.
“No! I’ve seen videos of them before, they speak like we do.” The second speaker rolled their eyes. The first speaker ignored them. “Hey. Hey! You okay? Blink twice for yes!”
You stared at the first speaker. They tilted their head back at you. “No? Not okay?” How were you even supposed to answer that question? You didn’t feel particularly hurt so much as pretty uncomfortable, but you didn’t feel totally put together either. After another moment of consideration, you made eye contact with the first speaker and carefully blinked twice.
“It’s okay!” they cried in utter delight. “Look, see?”
“Then we can move it somewhere. Get the interstellars involved. Go for the head, I’ll get the legs.”
“Why do you get the legs?” the first speaker whined. The second speaker ignored them and seized you by your ankles, hefting your legs up onto their shoulder. The first speaker, grumbling quietly, heaved your top half up.
Despite looking like sea creatures, they navigated the sandy dunes with a surprising level of ease. Within a few minutes, you were being set down on the wooden floor of a tiny, one-room building. The floor was flat underneath you, but you could see a slope leading into the ocean. The home was partially open, allowing for a smooth integration between water and land.
“Can you sit up?” The first speaker carefully lay you against the wall so you were in a seated position. “Naerie, can we get some water?”
The second speaker, Naerie, appeared holding a small, wooden cup. She passed it over to the first speaker, who held it to your mouth. “Here. Drink,” they said.
You sipped slowly. It wasn’t as pure as the water you were used to on your ship- it had a strange, slightly plant-like taste to it. Still, it was water and relatively clean, and it helped focus your mind and soothe your throat.
You leaned away from the water glass and cleared your throat. It was still sore, but it was functional. “Where am I?”
“It speaks,” Naerie said. Their voice was mildly surprised.
“Yeah. It does,” you said. “I… remember crashing here.”
“We saw that,” the first speaker said. “Well, we saw you fall into the ocean and dragged you to shore. I think your suit absorbed most of the impact?”
“They’re designed for kinetic redistribution.” The first speaker nodded, though their expression was entirely devoid of understanding. “Um. That means they’re designed to spread impact shock away from my body. I’m probably bruised, but I shouldn’t have broken anything.”
“I’ve never seen a human before,” the first speaker said. They lifted one of your hands, toying with your fingers curiously. They seemed fascinated by your lack of fins. “Not in person, anyway.”
“Yes. You’re quite a… reclusive species.” Naerie’s lip curled. A sliver of ice-cold worry dropped into the pit of your stomach. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“It-” An abrupt rush of memories cut your voice off. You remembered running, barely able to feel your limbs through the numbness of fear. You remembered navigating a tiny fighter ship with numb fingers. You remembered flying and flying, not toward anything, but just away, away, away. And then watching the slow failure of your ship’s systems, feeling the ice cold of space leech into your cabin, the thinness of the air. The certainty that you were going to die, cold and alone in space and that somehow, that was entirely better than being where you had been.
“Oh, hey. Shh, shh.” Scaled arms wrapped around you, tugging you against a warm chest. The first speaker was hugging you, nuzzling their face against your head. “It’s okay! You’re safe now.”
“I’m alone,” you said, voice choked. Tears spilled down your cheeks. “I swear. I’m alone. No one’s with me. I didn’t mean to come here. I’ll leave.”
“You don’t have to leave! It’s okay!” The first speaker tugged you into their chest and glared at the other. “Naerie! Be nice! It’s okay, shh, shh.” They rocked back and forth, pressing your head to their chest. “You’re okay. You’re safe now.”
“If you’re alone, then I suppose it’s fine,” Naerie said. They seemed unsettled by your sudden tears. “All right. Terraso, let them lie back. We should get a good look at them, make sure they’re not hurt.”
You ended up wearing only the thin undersuit of your flight suit while Naerie probed at you delicately. In the end, it was determined that you were likely badly bruised, but not seriously injured. As Naerie prodded at your body, Terraso prodded at your mind by conversing cheerily. Names and pronouns were formally exchanged, and you learned that your rescuers were a couple, and lived on their own on the outskirts of a large city.
“I don’t suppose you have anywhere to go,” Naerie said, glancing you over. “You lost everything with your ship, didn’t you?”
You nodded. Technically, the only thing you had lost was a second set of clothes, but they didn’t need to know that. “I know how to live on my own.” Not really true, but you were pretty sure you could figure something out. “I can-”
“Absolutely not!” Terraso reared up on his long, serpentine lower half. “If you don’t have anywhere to stay, you should stay with us.” He turned, looking pleadingly at Naerie. “We can’t just kick her out.”
Naerie, despite her cool nature, didn’t seem keen on kicking you out either. Her brow puckered as she looked you up and down. “No, I suppose not,” she said. “You look as though you’re one missed meal away from starvation.”
You laughed. “It’s fine. I’ve missed plenty of meals before.”
Terraso and Naerie stared at you. Apparently that statement wasn’t as reassuring as you’d expected it to be. “You’re staying,” Naerie said. “Tomorrow, we can go into the city and see if we can get you set up with a life preserver pass. It’ll at least let you stay for a couple of months.”
“Life preserver pass?” you repeated.
“It’s like an emergency citizenship card. For people who end up planetside on accident, and are having trouble getting back home. If you get a citizen to stick up for you, you can get a life preserver pass until you figure out how to go home again,” Terraso said.
“That’s the simplified version. There’s a little more to it than that. Terms and conditions and all that. But you don’t need to know that to fill out the paperwork,” Naerie said.
Terraso rolled his eyes and leaned close to speak in a stage whisper. “Don’t mind her. She works for interplanetary governmental communications. Lots of paperwork.”
You nodded. “What do you do?”
“Oh. Mind the house, mostly.” Terraso rolled onto his back, swishing his tail idly.
You stared. “Mind the house?”
“You know. Cook, clean, make sure everything’s all nice for Naerie when she comes home,” Terraso said.
You mulled that over. “You don’t have a job?”
Terraso shrugged. “I mean, I keep everything in the household running. That’s kind of a job. When we have kids someday, I’ll take care of them.” He gave Naerie an eager look. She smiled back at him. “Didn’t they have house spouses where you came from?”
“Everyone worked,” you said. “Both my parents. All my siblings. If you had time to relax, you had too much time on your hands.”
Naerie and Terraso exchanged a look. “Where did you say you were from again?” Naerie asked. Her voice was soft, like she was talking to something easily spooked. You bristled at the implication.
“I’m from the Unity Formation,” you said. Naerie looked at Tarraso. He shrugged.
“Okay. Well. You’ve been through a lot. Why don’t you let Terraso take care of you for a while? I’ll start getting things set up for going into the city and getting you a life preserver pass.” They exchanged a couple more significant looks as Naerie slipped into the water at the other side of the house. It seemed strange, but you were too exhausted to care. You slumped back against the wall.
“You want anything to eat?” Terraso asked. There was a forced, cheery note in his voice. “You really are skinny. It’d probably be good for you to eat.”
It was clear he was trying to distract you, but you were hungry enough to allow it. “Sure.” Terraso grinned and started rummaging through cabinets, chattering cheerily all the while. His voice rose and fell like a wave. After a little bit, you didn’t even hear the individual words anymore. Just the soothing sound of his voice.
The next morning, Nearie provided you with some clothes. They were toga-like, made more for her legless species than yours, but you accepted them regardless. They covered everything important, anyway. Terraso fussed over you until you had eaten nearly two large helpings of breakfast. Feeling uncomfortably full, you left with your companions for the city.
The city was built much in the same way as their house- partially submerged, with other members of the alien species slipping in and out of water with ease. However, you noticed a few other land-walkers, like you, walking easily through the part of the city that was on land.
Naerie noticed you looking. “This city’s one of the more progressive ones. It’s the only interstellar spaceport, so we get a lot of other species here. Not many humans, though.”
You shook your head. “That’s okay.” A hulking, bladed creature strode by. You tried not to stare. There were more species here than you’d ever seen in your entire life. Gawking at them would probably not make a good first impression. Naerie saved you by slithering up to the front door of a tall, stately building and gesturing you inside.
It was several hours of bureaucratic wrangling before you could leave the building again, this time with a subdermal implant marking your status as a temporary citizen. You toyed at the small bump on your skin. It was designed for easy removal, but you couldn’t stop prodding at it, barely holding in the urge to rip it back out. The feeling of something like that under your skin again was unsettling.
The next stop was the shopping district. There were a few small, out-of-the-way shops that catered to bipeds, and you left laden with new clothes. The variety was amazing- you had never seen so many different kinds of fabric in your life, or so many rich, vibrant colors. It was almost overwhelming.
“Is this all right?” you asked as the three of you left the shop. “It must have been expensive. I can try to pay you back-”
“Don’t worry about it,” Naerie said, waving her hand in your direction. “Temporary citizens get a small stipend to fund their lives here until they can get stabilized or off planet.”
“Oh.” You looked down at the clothes. “And you’re okay with me staying with you? I don’t want to be a bother. I-”
“I think it’s exciting!” Terraso cut in. “I’ve never really interacted with a human before.”
Naerie smiled warmly at him. “Terraso’s always been fascinated with aliens. And, regardless, we’re not the sort of people who throw those in need out on the street.” She gave a disdainful sniff, displaying her opinion of those sort of people.
The city glittered with glass spires as you headed out of the shopping district and into an area that smelled mouthwatering. “Want to get some lunch?” Terraso asked. His body bumped lightly against yours as he spoke. He had a habit of doing that, freely letting a hand rest on your side to pressing his shoulder against yours. You nearly jumped every time he touched you. The casual nature of it was surprising.
“I’m not hungry,” you said. “I had a lot for breakfast.” Not to mention that lunch was more of a holiday treat than something you ate every day.
“That was quite a few hours ago,” Naerie said. “You don’t eat much, do you?”
“I’m used to having only two meals a day,” you said, an edge of defensiveness creeping into your voice. Terraso and Naerie exchanged looks again.
In the end, Terraso convinced you to try some sort of fried plant that was apparently the city’s specialty. It was far richer and oilier than anything you’d ever eaten before, and you had to nibble it slowly. Terraso chattered amiably about the city- apparently he was something of an architect nerd and could list off a few interesting facts about most buildings, even the ones that didn’t look particularly impressive.
By the time you had returned home, you were exhausted, and your stomach was in revolt over the fried food. You spent most of the night hunched over their toilet while Naerie and Terraso alternately checked on you.
“I’m really sorry! I didn’t think it would make you sick,” Terraso said, tucking a blanket over your shoulders. You retched once more, bringing up thin bile. “I’ve seen humans eat that stuff before, so I just thought…”
“Maybe I’m allergic to it,” you suggested. Terraso made a chirruping noise of surprise.
“You weren’t gene treated for allergies as a kid?” he asked.
“Was I what?”
“Gene treated? You know, they do the histamine test and then they correct mast cells and…” He stared at your confused expression. “It’s standard medical procedure. Nobody gets sick or dies from allergies anymore.”
You shook your head. “We didn’t have it, I guess. I might not be allergic, anyway. I’ve never had anything like that before. Mostly, we had nutri-slurry.”
Terraso fussed with the edges of the blanket, twisting it between his hands as he tucked it around you again. “Did you grow up on a station in deep space?”
“Er.” You paused. “I grew up on a station.”
“You’re supposed to have one year planetside for every four years on the station. And more to eat than nutri-slurries.” Terraso’s tone was less scolding and more concerned. He gave you a look with his big, soft eyes. “Are you feeling any better? Less sick?”
“I’m okay,” you said. “You don’t have to stay. I’ll be fine.”
“Mm. I don’t believe you,” Terraso said. “You seem like one of those people who won’t admit to being sick even when you’re a fin’s thickness from death.”
“Being sick isn’t an excuse for missed work,” you mumbled. The memorized phrase jumped to your lips before you had time to even think about it. Terraso’s expression flickered for a moment before smoothing back to kindness.
“You don’t have any work to do right now, so why don’t you just rest?” Terraso curled his tail beneath him and smoothed the blanket between your shoulders. “Get some sleep. I’ll stay here.”
You were too weary to protest. Instead, you snuggled further under the blanket and closed your eyes. Even the twisting of your stomach wasn’t enough to keep you from the warm embrace of sleep.
Gradually, you settled into a sort of routine with your rescuers. You woke in the morning, ate breakfast, and Naerie would go to work. Then Terraso and you would take care of any household chores that needed doing. Given that there were two of you, it took much less time than usual, and Terraso would usually spend the rest of the day teaching you about the local culture. It was overwhelming at times, the level of variety that was present. So different from your home, it made your head spin.
As you got bolder with your questions, you noticed Naerie and Terraso exchanging looks more often. You just started calling it the Look in your head- you would say something about your home and they would give each other the Look. The Look usually meant the next few minutes would be full of awkward tension, while Naerie and Terraso circumnavigated the topic.
The first few times the Look occurred, it was strange. After that it quickly made its way to annoying, then straight up frustrating.
When they exchanged the Look after you spoke about the oddness of the local week-long festival, you put your foot down.
“If you think I haven’t noticed the two of you sneaking glances at each other every time I mention something from my home, you’re wrong,” you said. Terraso froze like a kid sneaking extra slurry. Naerie, on the other hand, seemed entirely unaffected. She put her utensils down and steepled her fingers, as best she could with webbed digits.
“We weren’t intending to keep anything from you,” she said. “But… ugh, I’m not going to dance around the reef anymore. Where exactly did you come from? You crashed here looking half starved, you usually refuse to discuss your old life, except cryptic, concerning details, and everything seems to suggest you crashed here on accident while running away from something. So. What were you running from?”
“I’m not a criminal,” you said. It came out far more defensive than you intended. Terraso sucked in a breath through his teeth and tried to play intermediary.
“We don’t think you’re a criminal! We don’t! That wasn’t what we were suggesting. We’re concerned, though,” he said, his voice softening. “We want to know that you’re safe. You don’t talk about your life before you came here. We’re just worried about you.”
“I’m fine.” Your voice was sharp, automatic. Defensiveness bristled all over you, like quills. “There is no reason to be concerned. I am still able to complete my duties.” Terraso blinked and he and Naerie exchanged the Look. “And stop doing that!”
“We didn’t mean to upset you. We’re only trying to look out for you.”
“I have been doing fine,” you said. “Please. Leave it.” Your voice shivered at the end. You swallowed. A shiver of fear rippled down your spine and dug into the pit of your stomach.
Terraso lifted his hands and spread his fins. “Hey,” he said, his voice lowering. “Hey, hey. It’s okay. You’re all right.” He moved slowly toward you until he was within touching distance. Despite being close enough to hold you, he just extended his hands, like he was waiting for you to make the first move. “Breathe. Just breathe. You’re safe. I swear you’re safe here. Just wait for a moment until you come back to us. Okay?”
The soothing rise and fall of his tone relaxed something in the back of your brain. Your chest loosened and the trembling fear in your gut eased. Tentatively, you reached out and touched his hand. His fingers closed around yours, loose enough that you could pull away if you wanted to.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Naerie said. She was speaking in the same soothing register as Terraso, though she was somewhat less practiced at it. “I’m just worried. I want to know that you’re okay.”
Her voice was unbearably tender on the last word. Terraso’s thumb traced along the back of your knuckles. The combination of two, tiny, kind actions made something in you, something that had barely been holding steady all this time, crack.
Sobs shuddered through your chest. Terraso made a quiet cooing noise and you slumped blindly, fumblingly, into him. Naerie slipped around him to rest a gentle hand on your back. For several moments, they held you up as you cried.
Somehow, you weren’t entirely sure how, you ended up on the floor, cradled between Naerie and Terraso. One of Terraso’s cheeks rested on your head. Naerie was rubbing your back up and down in slow, loose circles. “Feeling better?” Terraso asked quietly.
“I think so,” you said. Despite the tension releasing in your chest, you couldn’t get your fingers to relax on Terraso’s arm. He didn’t mention it. “I- I know you’re worried.”
“You don’t have to talk about it,” Naerie said. “I shouldn’t have pushed it.”
“No. I know I should talk about it. It’s… not happy, though.” You took in a deep breath. Terraso nuzzled you comfortingly. “It’s… I spent most of my life on the Unification Centralized space station. My parents joined when I was two. It was supposed to be this… utopia, I guess. A self-sustaining space station. But it wasn’t that. Once you were on the station, you couldn’t leave, and you had to work for the greater good. They said that all the time. You needed to work for the greater good. If you weren’t working, if you got sick, it meant you weren’t strong enough, that there was something wrong with you. And that was life. You worked and you tried to keep on the good side of the leadership, and if you didn’t you were in trouble.”
Naerie was looking at you with a combination of worry and horror. You glanced toward her face, but you couldn’t maintain eye contact. “I… left. My little sister- she was born after my parents joined. She got sick. Really sick. They said that she was being… I don’t know, punished for something.” Tears stung at your eyes, but your emotions had become manageable enough to repress them. “She died. Because we weren’t allowed to get help for her. And I didn’t know where to go after that but I knew I couldn’t stay there.”
“So, you left,” Terraso said. “That must have been terrifying.”
“It wasn’t, really,” you said. “I mean, it was. But it all seemed really far away. I didn’t want to die, but I guess I figured that staying there was a death sentence anyway, so it didn’t matter. I just… I had to leave. I had to.”
There was silence for a few minutes. Terraso rested his head on your shoulder. Naerie’s arm lay across your shoulders. Their touch felt stabilizing, grounding, like it was what was pulling you to the planet, not the gravity.
“I’m sorry,” Naerie said. “I’m sorry that happened to you. And I’m sorry about your sister.”
“Thank you.” Your voice grated in your throat. You cleared it a few times.
“How did you come here?” Terraso asked. “Did you just pick a planet to go to at random?”
You snorted. “I didn’t even get that far. I just tried to go in a different direction from the space station as fast as I could. I used one of the little space hoppers, the ones that are only supposed to be used for short travels. They don’t have onboard navigation systems.”
“That was reckless,” Naerie said. “You could have died. You almost did die.”
You shrugged. “I know. Like I said, I wasn’t really all that focused on surviving. I just wanted to get away.”
Terraso hugged you. His tail swung up, loosely wrapping around your waist. Naerie petted your head absently, though her gaze was distant.
“Please focus on surviving now,” Terraso said. His voice came out soft enough that it was almost a murmur. “It’s… scary to hear you talk like that. Like you don’t care if you live or die.”
You brushed your hand along his head, prompting his fins to stand to attention. “It’s okay. I’m feeling better now. It’s easier, with you two here. Like I have something to live for.”
Naerie smiled at you. Her eyes softened, glittering with emotion in a way you’d only seen when she looked at Terraso. Something in your chest tightened and loosened in the same moment.
“I have a suggestion,” Naerie said. “You have never experienced anything like the festival before, have you?” You shook your head. Naerie smiled. “Well. Why don’t we go out? It will be a good experience for you to have fun.”
Terraso perked up, lifting his head off your shoulders. “Yes! We haven’t been to one of the festivals in so long and it’s so much better with someone who hasn’t been before! You’ll love it.” He straightened up, tail coiling and uncurling with enthusiasm. “Only if you want to go, of course,” he added, looking at you with uncertainty.
“I’ve never been to one before,” you said, “so I won’t know what it is you’re supposed to do…”
Terraso grabbed your hands, squeezing them in his. “You’re not supposed to do anything except have fun! It’ll be good, I promise! And if you’re not having a good time, we can just go home.”
“It’s true. There’s no reason we can’t come back if you aren’t enjoying yourself,” Naerie said. “I think you’d enjoy it. And I think I’d enjoy seeing you have fun.”
“Okay, okay. If you both are so excited, then we’ll go. I just need a minute to get ready-”
“Meet us outside in ten,” Naerie said. She slipped underwater with Terraso, presumably so they could both get ready themselves.
Ten minutes later, Naerie met you outside. She flicked her fins casually in the faint sunlight that filtered through the clouds. “Terraso will be along in a moment. He likes to dress up.”
“Dress up?” The concept of getting into fancy dress to go places was still a bit of a foreign concept to you. Everyone had worn the same uniform in your old home.
“He likes the festivals,” Naerie said. “You’ll see.”
Almost as soon as she’d finished speaking, Terraso emerged from the sea, squirming in excitement. His fins seemed a brighter shade of red than usual, though you weren’t sure if he was slightly flushed or if it was an effect of the bright gold piercings he’d applied. A few of them even had red, fluttering cloths attached to them, giving the impression that he had more fins than he did.
“Are we ready to go?” he asked. Naerie smiled, linking one of her arms through his. The way her eyes roved over his body almost made you blush.
“We were waiting on you.” She reached out and, to your surprise, linked her other arm through yours. You tried not to look too surprised. As strange as it was, you didn’t want to do anything that might make her let go.
The city was enveloped in brilliant lights when you arrived. Aliens and natives alike were out in the streets, laughing and talking and shouting amongst themselves. The air smelled of a hundred different things, all delicious. Stalls were set up all over the streets, most of them with various pieces of art or food or souvenirs for sale. A few of them seemed to be offering some sort of lessons in art or dance or other such things. It was almost immediately overwhelming. Not negatively overwhelming, but it took you a moment to process everything.
“You should decide what we do first,” Terraso said. He looked at you with bright, eager eyes. “See anything you like?”
“Er,” you said. There were a lot of things that looked interesting, but you couldn’t sort out what a lot of them were, much less what you would enjoy.
“Terraso,” Naerie said. “Why don’t you pick first? We’ve been here before, after all, so we should be guides.”
In the end, Terraso dragged you over to some sort of simple game that consisted of tossing small balls into several different containers. You tried a couple of times, but the game was a lot more difficult than it looked. After quite a few tries, Terraso managed to score enough points to receive a stuffed toy resembling one of the many eel-like creatures that lived in their oceans.
“Here!” He thrust it into your arms, smiling triumphantly. You blinked down at it, a little confused.
“I don’t need this?” you said. “You don’t even have stuffed animals in your house. Why were you so intent on winning it? I don’t even think it’s particularly well made.”
“That’s not the point!” Terraso said, still grinning broadly. “The point is winning! Especially winning something for someone else!”
“He loves those games,” Naerie said, leaning over to speak quietly in your ear. “He’ll spend all our money on those things if we let him.”
You looked down at the stuffed toy in your arms. It looked pretty wonky, honestly. “Why? You could probably buy one of these for pretty cheap. Why spend so much money to win it? There’s no point.”
Naerie smiled slightly, eyes glittering. “Of course there’s a point. It’s to have fun.”
Naerie ended up drawing you over to some art booths. There were some live demonstrations, even things like glass blowing. You were fascinated by the careful motions, the way the demonstrator was able to twist blazingly hot glass into delicate shapes. Apparently taking into account how fascinated you were, Naerie practically shoved you into the arena the instant the demonstrator asked for a volunteer.
The demonstrator was kind and gentle as he helped you through the moves. In the end, you had a small replica of an undersea plant. Apparently you had a knack for shaping glass and the demonstrator insisted that you have another lesson when you came to pick up the piece from him.
“Perhaps there’s an apprenticeship there for you,” Naerie said as you rejoined her and Terraso.
“An apprenticeship?” you repeated. It hadn’t been something you were considering.
“Just a suggestion,” Naerie said. “You seemed to enjoy it and he seemed like a good teacher. I was only thinking- you’ve been here for a while. Perhaps it’s time to start… setting down roots?”
Her voice was delicate, gentle, but you could feel the intensity behind both her and Terraso’s gazes. It was true- you’d been living with them for a while, but you hadn’t really made any preparations to fend for yourself. You’d just been sort of floating.
“It’s something to think about,” Naerie said, putting a soft hand on your arm. “You don’t need to think about it right now.”
Your stomach picked that moment to interrupt. Terraso burst into high-pitched giggles. You glared. “Maybe we should get something to eat,” he said. “Something that’s not too hard on your stomach.” You pulled a face. They’d never forgotten your incident after the fried food and, in all fairness, you couldn’t either. Your stomach had adjusted to some of the heavier fare, but you were still prodded to nausea by anything with too much grease.
Naerie ended up picking some kind of grilled plant matter skewered on a thin wooden stick. Terraso practically crawled over her back as she took the sticks from the vendor. “Here, here, take it,” she said, passing him the stick. He bit into it delightedly, tail wriggling. She offered you one as well and you bit into it tentatively.
The fruit was sweet and salty in equal measure, with just a bit of bitterness from the char. You practically ripped into it, eating it with a ravenous fervor. Within a minute, it was gone.
Naerie laughed. “We’ll have to get you some more of those,” she said. She held out her own stick. “Here. You can have a bit of mine, too.”
You paused. Naerie had already taken a few bites out of it, and she was holding it out to you like she was just expecting you to take a bite while she was holding it. Somehow, that idea came across as almost unbearably intimate. A flush started to creep up your face. Still, Naerie was looking at you with expectance. Maybe you were overreacting? And even if you weren’t… you wanted to. Slowly, you leaned forward and took a delicate bite of the sweet fruit.
Naerie smiled. “Good?” Her voice had taken on a melodic tone, one that made your blushing even worse. You nodded slowly.
“Good,” you said. Terraso smiled and winked at you over Naerie’s shoulder. You looked down at the ground, flustered. “Er. We should, er. Keep going, right?”
The rest of the night was spent wandering the festival, attending the booths and activities. There was more to experience than you’d ever seen before- rides and shows and games all in a riot of colors. At some point, Naerie had pressed alcohol into your hands and you’d started drinking. Terraso was in a similar drunken state, giggling and flopping around, his slithering unsteady.
When the three of you made it back home, all of you were tipsy, bordering on drunk. Naerie was the most sober, but that wasn’t necessarily saying much. She managed to get both you and Terraso in the door before she slumped against a wall, giggling faintly.
Terraso was wrapped around you like a scaly rope, tightening his grip every time you tried to wriggle free. His head was pressed into the side of your neck, fins tickling lightly against your skin.
“Tired,” he mumbled. “Go to bed.”
“You can go to bed, if you want, but you gotta let go!” you said.
“No!” Terraso nuzzled further into your neck. “I want to sleep with yooouuu.”
“I can’t sleep underwater. I’ll drown,” you reminded him.
“Then I’ll sleep up here,” he declared. He lifted his head from your neck and, with some effort, focused his attention on Naerie. “Come on! Come sleep with us!” He made grabby hands at her, then started giggling. “Ooh. Sleep together. Ha ha. We shooouuuld.”
The double entendre made your cheeks grow warm. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” you said, trying to gently pry him off of you. That only made him cling tighter.
“But Naerie said she wouldn’t miiind,” Terraso said. He tilted his head, hanging off of you so he was looking at Naerie upside down. “Right? You said you wouldn’t miiiiiiind, Naerie.” He looped his arms tighter around your neck. “You’re so nice and pretty.” He hiccupped. “And- and- I love yooouuu.” His face was almost completely buried in your neck, muffling his voice. “I love you and Naerie and I wanna be with both of you! Naerie agrees!”
You looked up at Naerie. She was staring at you with wide eyes. It was hard to tell with her species, but you were pretty sure she was blushing. “He’s very drunk,” she said apologetically. “He tends to be, er. Very open when he has too much.” She held her hands out. “Here, I can take him and make sure he gets to bed okay.”
“Noooo!” Terraso wailed. He wrapped around you as tightly as he could. “Not goin’ anywhere!”
Perhaps you also had gotten a little tipsy, because you were feeling unusually bold. “I don’t mind,” you said. “If he wants to stay with me, that’s fine. He can sleep in my bed tonight.”
“Yay!” Terraso mumbled from his position against your shoulder. Naerie seemed conflicted, but she helped you and Terraso into bed. Despite how awkward it made things, Terraso was very insistent on not letting go of you at all.
“What he was talking about before,” you said as Naerie helped you into bed. “That stuff he said, about…”
“About the sleeping with you?” Naerie asked. She sounded unusually unsteady. “Yes. It was. I’m sure he wouldn’t have said anything if the drink hadn’t rendered him completely senseless.” Despite her words, her tone was affectionate. “We didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“It doesn’t,” you said hurriedly. Terraso moaned and somehow managed to snuggle closer to you. “I like you. Both of you. You’re the first people who’ve ever been really nice to me. And you’re both so sweet and Terraso’s funny and you’re so caring- I don’t think I could ever find anyone better.”
“I was hesitant to approach you about it,” Naerie said in a slow, uncertain voice. “I didn’t want to make you feel pressured to be in a relationship with us because we’re the ones helping you. But we… have discussed it. Polyamorous relationships are fairly common among our species. We’ve been interested.”
“I’ve never had any kind of relationship before,” you said. “Not a romantic one, anyway. So I’ll be a little new to this. If you’re still okay with going through with this?”
Naerie smiled and leaned closer to you. One of her hands lingers on your face. “I think I would be interested in teaching you. And I’m certain you couldn’t drag Terraso away with wild therians.”
“It’s true,” Terraso mumbled into your shoulder.
Something in your stomach fluttered. “If- if you’re sure, then.”
Naerie smiled. “I could not be more sure,” she said. She leaned in, then paused, your faces less than an inch apart. You realized she was waiting for you to make the next move. It took you a moment to steel your confidence, then you leaned in and pressed your lips to hers.
The kiss was clumsy and uncertain, but it managed to be good nonetheless. When you broke apart again, you were giggling giddily.
“Perhaps you need practice,” Naerie said, a faint smile playing with her mouth.
“I’ll help,” Terraso declared. He pressed a sloppy kiss to the corner of your mouth. Naerie laughed, easing him off of you and into bed. His tail wrapped around your leg insistently, though, and there was no way you would be able to pry it off.
“I suppose we’re staying up here tonight,” Naerie said. Terraso nuzzled into your side with a happy sigh. Naerie smiled. “He’s happy, at least.”
“I’m happy too,” you said. Naerie looked up at you, eyes soft with affection.
I’ll have to draw up an official timeline just so people have a clear visual lol. So this ficlet takes place after Adoration and Fantasies, but before the eighth chapter of Winter. This one is a little more lore-heavy than all the others.
and i know i know i know I KNOW i said i wouldn’t continue winter but this idea came to me in a feverish strike of inspiration so i wrote it. again i do not know if i’ll make a solid sequel, or if ya’ll are only getting these shorts, i just write what my adhd brain tells me
trigger warnings/tags; car crash, hospital, gun violence, gore
Note: For this story, I’m going to do something a tad different. Instead of a full 10k multi-chapter story or a single oneshot, I’m going to do about five episodic 1.5k chapters that capture very short snippets of these character’s lives as an experiment. I’d like to see if I can pull off full character arcs with that kind of restriction. There will be smut chapters that are longer (I think, I have them planned anyways), but the bulk of their relationship will kind of be like tv show episodes.
Prince Naga/Assassin Reader
Chapter content: sfw, no warnings besides some innocent breaking and entering, and one decapitated head :)
When the elusive and absurdly rich Lord Hawthorne announces his unusual competition to seek a bride, you don’t think it would be any harm to enter. But perhaps there is a reason no one has ever seen Lord Hawthorne in person…
You left the house after midnight, wearing only your nightgown and a coat.
The whole week after the picnic had been difficult. Every time a carriage passed the house, every time you heard a caller at the door, you would be stirred from your chores and hide by the front window, peering out onto the street, waiting for a letter with a golden seal to arrive. And with each passing day, the disappointments mounted.
Whenever you raised the topic of the Lord with your family, you found they had contradictory and increasingly fuzzy memories of the Sunday picnic. Your father remarked on what a good conversationalist Hawthorne had been, though they could not have spoken more than a few words to each other. Your mother talked at length about the finery of the manor, though she hadn’t stepped foot inside. Abigail told you a joke Hawthorne had allegedly shared with her, and Isadora praised the cider she had allegedly been served.
For the first few days, you fidgeted nervously every time your mother entered a room or called you for work. However altered her memories of Hawthorne himself might be, she was immovably constant in her conviction that you would marry the Lord. She fussed over you in the mornings, insisting that the house be always open to callers in case the Lord – who you reminded her had never once been seen outside of his estate – might just be in the neighbourhood.
You were used to feeling irritated at your mother’s nagging over your prospects. Now, though, a new emotion lived in you, rooted in your stomach. That strange and exciting tension that Hawthorne had evoked in your core had soured into a sense of regret, which was quickly ripening to bitterness.
(I’ve seen many stores on the tags I look at, so I want to give my own go, their may be multiple parts!
I’m not sure how long it will last. However, I’m throwing in some things I find stray far from generic romance/fantasy stories, as much as possible at least. This world is set in an industrial revolution/ steam punk type era. The magic of this world has been abolished by machinery to replace it, mythical creatures sworn to secrecy, to hide. The gods are still worshipped, but their belief fading, only the helpless worship gods)
Basic plot: A thief, arrogant, egotistic and prideful in her success as an outlaw, finds herself in a troubled situation, and to her demise, at the mercy of a forest beast!
The beasts existence was always questioned by folk, carried by rumour and bedtime stories to send naughty children cowering under their blankets. Some believe that the beast awaits helplessly lost wonderers to feast on. Others believe the beast to be a protector of all forest life, a personification of death and life, fertility and barrenness.
They meet, and maybe, it’s the beast who shows the arrogant thief that there is more to her than just her ability to be cunning and an outlaw.
———————————————-
“Get back here bitch!”
The yells and cries echoed through the winding forest, emitted from the platoon of mindless guardsmen who’s armour pieces clunk together as they ran, every step filled with anger; you had stolen from the city, however, not a callous shop or a mothers house, you had managed to wrap your cunning fingers around a fine piece of jewellery. A ruby ring that once sat uncomfortably on the queens thin, wrinkly and witch-like hands. You were sure that the ring would sit much more comfortably in your slender, delicate hands.
A sneaky laugh escaped your lips as you sprinted through the forest, your leather drapes hardly weighing you down, neither did the boots that carried you. Underneath a leather coat was a plain white shirt with 3 buttons undone bellow the collar bone, it was stained with mud and dirt and dust. You were neither worn down by heavy weaponry; you only carried a small dagger and your trusty revolver to a belt, just above simple pants, also stained with dirt and debris.
There was no time to perfectly aim a bullet toward the soldiers, and you were not stupid enough to fight the platoon of muscular men single handed. Instead; you ran, ran as fast as you can, delving deeper into the deep, dark forest that carried an eerie white mist, blanketing the ground as if it were releasing a thick smoke into the air.
The only light illuminating the forest was the beauty of Luna above, her full gaze lightening your path to victory; to safety!
You swung from low bearing branches, dove under fallen logs, and ran through mud, thickened by a passing rainfall that seemed to pick up again by the looming clouds above, however, the light of the moon had yet to be covered, to your advantage.
Soon, your breath became heavy, your limbs became tired, and your speed slowed. This allowed a smart guardsman, with a steady hand, to shoot you in the bottom of your thigh.
Success seemed suddenly so far from reach.
“Got her!” A soldier snorted, triumphantly, proud of his aim.
A sudden panic poked and pricked at your chest, making your breathing heavier, if that wasn’t already amplified by the sharp, tearing pain from the knife embedded in your thigh. Before you knew it, you found yourself face first on the floor, to exhausted to move, and paralysed by pain.
You managed to turn to your back, to be greeted by the platoon of soldiers, their faces twisted by their anger, and darkened by the fading moon light.
They were all monsters, their bodies twisting and contracting into a nightmare, or maybe it was the exhaustion that clouded your eyesight and gave the world a blurry filter; you were loosing blood.
The leader of this platoon of nightmare guardsman knelt down to meet your weakens gaze. He was a silver fox to say the least, met with the gaunt look of a middle aged man who never failed to miss a days work, what a stressful life.
“The king has ordered your immediate execution” The silver fox smirked; he was more than happy to put an end to your miserable existence, it was a surprise he granted you the privilege of a final sentence.
You spat in his face, and the smirk disappeared, replaced by anger through gritted teeth and narrowed eyes bellow crossed, silver and thick brows. He placed a dagger to your throat with force, it’s silver illuminating the fading moonlight, and revealing your horrified reflection.
It had been awhile since you were in fear...
The daggers reflection had also reflected something else. After soldiers had backed away from you, their feet trembling with fear, and heavy footsteps that rattled the ground beneath you, bringing forth a chilling breeze and an ominous atmosphere, a silhouette emerged through the tall cedar trees.
Lightening filled the sky above, bringing a loud earthshaking thunder with it, and alas, the heavens opened, and rain battered the forest floor. The moons light was covered by clouds, darkening the forest, and only few radiant beams escaped the dark, angry clouds.
A shriek filled the air, and sent the soldiers on their toes, running for whatever safety wait far, ever so far from the forest, and in the warm houses of the kingdoms city.
Consciousness was fading fast, however, you had been fighting it since the silhouettes hooves had first rattled the ground around you. Your breath was out of sync, as you sobbed while a strong fear clawed at your chest.
Before you allowed yourself to pass out, a pair of beastly orange eyes looked over you, glistening, analysing and focusing upon your weakened body.
You let unconsciousness close your eyes.
Peace...
———————————
A bright, warm light woke your unconscious body. The light seeped through an open window, past linen, thin curtains and across the cobblestone floor to reach the soft fabrics of the vermillion duvet blanketing you.
You abruptly shot up as the scuffling of wings lead to the sudden appearance of a bird that had perched itself on the bottom part of the beds frame. The birds small talons curled against the gold frame; it had been waiting for you to get up.
You winced and hisses through gritted teeth as you sat up. Then you noticed, you were clean...
Your thin strands of silver hair were no longer matted with dirt, your hands and arms no longer grubby. Even your clothes had been changed to a white night gown that hung loosely over your bony shoulders.
Once you grasped your surroundings, you noticed you were in a bedroom, with a cobblestone floor, a wardrobe and a small writing desk.
“Are you going to keep staring at the room?” The bird opened its beak, and spoke in an inpatient tone.
You gasped, quickly sitting up further and backing away to the front of the bed frame, to once again wince as a sharp pain, not just in your thigh, but in the side of your stomach.
“You can speak!” You said with surprise, a look of fear plastered on your face. The events that took place before you passed out spring back to mind, and you took all your might to put yourself as far away from the talking bird as possible.
“I’m not going to eat you, yet” The bird chuckled, obviously amused by your fear. You grabbed one of the bars of the golden bed frame and kept a tight grip. You couldn’t believe what you were seeing, what you were hearing.
“Now I understand that the situation you have been through is not particularly nice, and you’re obviously in pain. You have however been in a slumber for a number of days now, it’s about time you woke up” The bird rustled it’s feathers straightening it’s pose.
There wasn’t anything too unusual about the bird apart from the fact that it spoke. To you, he seemed like a normal black bird.
“I apologise, miss Lucia” The bird bowed his head.
You gasped. He knew your name? How on earth? You questioned inside your head.
“We didn’t mean to scare you”
“Who is we?” You retorted, your look of fear replaced with confusion.
To your left, a silhouette stood beside the doorframe darkening the left side of the room. A hoof stood forward, then another, both covered with vibrant green moss. As you worked your eyes up a bulky, muscular leg, slightly bent at the knee, similar to a goat however, this figures legs were covered in a thick black fur that seemed to absorb any any light that touched it. His body was covered with a thick, brown robe.
As your eyes looked upon the face of the creature, he bared the face of a radiant stag and horns to accompany the top of his head, coated with vines and leaves. The visible chest and shoulders of the beast with layered in the thick coat of fur, similar to the rest of his body.
You remembered the stare of those orange eyes.
A large hand fell from the doorframe to the side of the beast, he stepped forward, analysing you as you analysed him.
“He was referring to myself” The beast spoke oh so gently, his voice carried by the warm breeze to your ears. As if a spell was intertwined in his baritone voice, you released your grip of the bed frame, and allowed yourself to relax slightly, your breath became less rapid.
As you opened your mouth to reply, nothing came out, so you sat, wide eyed, wide mouthed, simply speechless.
How could a beast so frightening, so terrifying carry the voice of an angel, the voice of a caring father...
“You seem better, your skin has colour. You are well rested” The beast cocked his head, moving closer to finally sit comfortably on the end of the bed. You were not frightened.
“I don’t understand...” You finally spoke, your voice coarse and croaky.
“I have so many questions. Why am I here? Where am I? Who are you? Why did yo-“ You were quickly interrupted as the beast spoke once more.
“All questions will be answered in time” Your heart beat slowed once more, and you sunk slightly into your soft, white pillows.
He was ethereal.
“I shall leave the two of you, and return soon” The bird bowed once more, and quickly flew from the room through the open window with speed, leaving you with the beast. You were not frightened.
“You had a nasty accident, I witnessed it” The beast soon broke the silence.
“You were shot with a bullet spiced with poison. I didn’t think the city had need for poison anymore. That’s why you may be experiencing pain in your stomach” The beast said, as if he already knew where your pain had spread.
“I have healed your wound, however I can not heal the internal damage, it shall disappear with time and medication” The beast stated. You were suddenly filled with a slight panic, and you started to question. How were these clothes put on you?
“YOU STRIPPED ME!” You barked, anger and embarrassment turning your complexion red. You shot up from your relaxed position, and narrowed your eyes at the beast.
The beast showed a confused expression. Which soon turned to a calm amusement; a chuckle left the beasts jaws.
“I don’t care much for your body, I simply wished to heal you. You know...” The beast trailed off.
“It is not your time to go yet”
“And who are you to decide that!” You snorted, still embarrassed by the thought of the beast looking upon your uncovered body.
The beast sighed, as if he were waiting for that question to arise.
“I am known as a forest guardian, called the son of nature, or maybe you’ve heard people refer to me as the keeper of life, and the guider of death. I am fruitfulness, I am barrenness. But you can call me Otker” He introduced himself, then finally stood, making his way to your side of the bed.
He then offered his hand. You analysed it, his skin dark, and claws long and sharp. They could slice your throat before you could take another breath.
“You should get up, what is recovery without any fuel to aid it?” Otker said, gesturing his hand for you to grab.
You didn’t need help, so instead you attempted to shuffle your weight to the side, to which you did while attempting to ignore the throbbing pain of your stomach and thigh. You attempted to stand, however your legs almost felt like they gave way. Luckily a muscular, furry arm was beside you to put you back on your balance.
I guess this is what two days in a comatose state does to you, you thought.
With the arm of Otker to lean on you slowly both slowly left the room. You could tell with every step that Otker made he tried to pace himself with your own, which may have proven difficult to someone of his size; he loomed 3 or 4 foot above you.
As you travelled through the castle hallway, the walls decorated with candle lit lights and paintings of the forest outside with all its fruitful beauty, you noticed that nobody else seemed to inhabit any of the passing rooms.
“Do you not have any staff?” You asked with dying curiosity, maybe Otker had eaten them?
The beast looked down to you.
“I live alone” He simply stated, and continue to guide you through the halls. He was dismissive in the way he spoke.
After a painful trip down the cold stairs, that almost froze your bare feet, you both found yourself in what appeared to be a living room.
A fireplace that had recently been extinguished filled the room with a warm woodland smell, a crimson rug with gold fabric rims warmed your feet as you stood on it, sinking your toes into its soft touch.
The room was huge! Lit with the natural light of the morning sky seeming through open windows, once covered by heavy curtains that matched the pattern of the rug. The room was also filled with shelves, which you didn’t analyse what was on them. You simply sank into one of the chairs you were seated on by Otker.
“I will be back soon” He said calmly, before leaving you to your own devices.
You yawned, sitting comfortably in the soft chair, curling your legs beside you to lean your elbow against the arm, and rest your head on your clean hands.
It wasn’t long before Otker returned with a platter of fruit and tea for the two of them, that was carefully placed on the small table between them both.
You glared at the platter set before you, your mouth watering with hunger, your ice eyes scanning every piece of fruit laid before you. Apples, pears, berries, grapes and even bananas.
What a rarity.
Otker seemed to be analysing your body movements; he knew you were hungry. With the simple tilt of his head, you dug in to the food set before you. You didn’t care for manners, you wanted to fill the void that was your empty stomach.
It seemed like a matter of seconds before you devoured the whole tray of delicious fruit, and finally, ever so gently you took a sip of tea. The beast chuckled, and you stared up at him.
“What are you laughing at?” You snorted, wiping the remaining fruit juices from your face.
“You must have been hungry, I am happy to have helped you fill the bottomless pit of your stomach” Otker replied, retaining his calm tone; he wasn’t fazed by your rude attitude.
The truth was, you had never meant to show such a nasty impression of yourself, wether it was fear, or the simple fact that you didn’t feel as if you deserved to be rescued or even how you thought that it was stupid how a huge beast would spare his time to help such an insignificant human like yourself.
You didn’t say sorry. Sorry was a sign of weakness, sorry meant you owed people something, sorry meant you were in debt. But you felt guilty for not saying it.
“Question!” You broke another silence abruptly. You thought it would be about time to ask some questions you were dying to be answered.
The Beast flicked one of his long ears, that dropped down slightly, just above his shoulders. Then turned to you, placing the tea cup he held in his hands down onto the empty platter.
“You’re the ‘son of nature’ right? So, what does that mean in terms of your job, or your duty?” You asked with genuine curiosity, awaiting an answer.
“I ensure that the balance between life and death is kept, that the existence of everything within the world follows its life’s circle, to fufill its purpose, and complete their life with purpose. I’ve wandered the earth long enough to know of everything’s journey. There are however few times I intervene. The only things that are genuinely linear about nature is the fact that we start with life and end with death .” Otker spoke from experience, obviously. It was easy to tell that the beast had lived for many years, maybe Centuries, or maybe more...
However, his answer sprouted another question. Another question that burned at the back of your throat.
“Then why did you save me?”
After you asked the next question, the beast leant forward, placing his elbows upon his knees, and putting his hands together. He stated directly at you as he spoke with a stern tone.
“I have seen many-a-lives taken abruptly, snatched away before they had a chance to even give themselves a purpose. I am not just a caretaker of the forests...I am a protector. The lives of those who are taken before their time, become restless souls, wondering aimlessly without a path. Sometimes, they find a guiding light to the afterlife, and other times”
Otker paused, closing his eyes.
“They never find that light, thus pronounced ghosts, negative energies or entities that will feed from anyone’s life form, or simple existence to feel purpose, to feel life...I hope you never stumble upon such entities, as they are far beyond my own help.”
Opening his eyes again, Otker continued.
“The reason I saved you. Was because you do not deserve to become such an entity. You, Lucia, have a purpose ahead of you. Im not here to tell you it, however, if you put faith in me, trust into my work...I may be able to be the guiding hand that leads you to it” Otker smiled. He was offering you guidance, another chance at life.
Was it worth it? You had no one beyond the forest, no one waiting for you, you didn’t have a purpose or a duty to serve. But could you trust Otker?
“What makes you think I could trust you? I don’t need help! I can do perfectly fine on my own! I don’t need anyone! I can do everything on my own fine!” You shouted, offended that this beast had even thought of you as weak, why else would he offer you help? Help was for the weak and powerless!
“I don’t need you! I don’t need anyone!” You repeated, clawing the arms of the couch to stand, your eyes narrowed, your face red with anger that stiffened your body. You curled your lip.
Your anger was interrupted by pain. Pain that twisted your stomach and buckled your legs. You fell under the weight of your own body onto the floor. Otker was quick to your aid, lifting your head from the soft crimson carpet, he let out a soft sigh from his nostrils, blowing the loose strands of hair from your face.
Your eyes watered with pain, and the fact that you were helpless. You felt weak and powerless. You were weak and powerless.
“Wanting or needing help is not a sign of weakness, or lack of integrity, it does not make you inferior to others” Otker spoke with sympathy. You had never been sympathised with, and the feeling crushed your ribs and poked your heart, leaving you breathless.
“Your life as a successful outlaw has left you the outlook of the world being against you. You are feared, hated, shooed away by everyone you meet. But in reality, you’ve had no one to lend you a hand, thus, you’ve found the only path is a dangerous one, one that lead you to bend the rules of your broken society.” As if the beast had acquired the knowledge of your whole life through your watering eyes, he spoke what was true.
“I will never understand the world of humans, but here, we follow a different set of rules, ones governed by nature herself. Welcome to a world where you may now know more than just theft...
You WILL have a better life here” Otkers voice was a wave of truth, and clarity that cuddled your body.
Otker lent down, his muzzle millimetres from the tiny hairs of your ear, that pricked up as he whispered.
“I promise”.
Your heart raced, could you trust him? Could your life be greater, filled with a purpose other than to steal and fend your yourself? Maybe you could start a life here, maybe you could have friends, a family! You were overwhelmed with emotions. Emotions that you couldn’t identify.
You found yourself heading toward to beast, your arms curling around the thick fur around his neck, to grip the fur at the back of his neck. You buried your head under Otkers jaw.
His pelt smelt like fresh leaves, a clear breeze, it smelt like peace and tranquility.
Your eyes watered. But you didn’t cry, even when the large hand of Otker simply cupped your back, his fingers reaching from one side of your rib cage to the other.
“You’ll be okay”
———————————————-
A week had passed.
Instead of dragging on, like all weeks did, you found yourself floating through the week; no worries, no bounty hunters, no thieving and no worrying. Throughout the past week you spoke to Otker about life prior to your arrival here, more than you would’ve liked to, but you couldn’t help placing your trust in that soft, soothing voice.
He also explained, during a nice dinner in the living room that you had crossed some sort of barrier, that humans could never reach, unless it was wanted by anyone who lived here.
You had also explored the surrounding forest next to the castle. It was beautiful! Lush with flowers of white, yellow, green, purple, every colour you could think of. Trees were tall and great, strong in the stance and covered in blossoming vines.
Not too far from the castle walls, and court garden, was a river, fruitful with fish and frogs, covered in lily pads.
You had rarely seen the forest at night, but to your knowledge, as the curtains closed before you slept, as is automated by some form of machinery, or by the will of Otker himself, you caught glimpses of blue, glowing hues. You didn’t think much it.
Your clothes had also been cleaned, but there was no need for them, as you had been introduced to a lovely maiden, named Violet. You’d only seen her once, but it was obvious that her name came from the colour of her hair, that at the time was tied in a fish bone plat. However this wasn’t what drew your attention to her, it was the pointed, long ears that sprouted from her head.
She simply waved her head at you when you saw her, and passed you the clothes that she said she had made.
Passed was an understatement; she had given you a whole wardrobe of clothes, they were soft, ‘made with the finest fabrics’ Violet exclaimed as she helped you fill your bedroom draws with them. She made you underwear, dresses and even some normal pants and shirts, they were beautiful to say the least.
Her highlight of the week filled you with happiness, as you sank your head deeper into the bath tub you currently sat in, your bath seasoned with Rosemary and Lavender; you were at peace.
“You sure you haven’t bathed yourself enough yet” The bird, you had met when you first awoke in this castle said, making you rise your head from the warm water.
The bird, named Alfred; a perfectly fitting name, shifted his feet across the tub. He was turned from you as you bathed yourself.
“Soon” you whispered, relaxing yourself and closing your eyes. You had grown fond of Alfred, as over the past week he had accompanied you, mostly during morning and evening. You would often converse and chatter about your thoughts of the castle whenever he asked. If you here honest, you felt as if you could tell Alfred anything you wanted, and the words would be locked behind his yellow beak; he was trustworthy, perhaps more so than Otker himself.
Finally, you left the warmth of the bath, and dried yourself in cotton towels, careful around the tenderness of your thigh and stomach. You could now walk with more ease and complete everyday tasks. After tending to your wet skin, you clothed yourself in a loose shirt with a folded collar and and a dark grey, long skirt that brushed just above your ankles. You finally put your feet in a pair of leather ankle boots with a low heel.
You felt clean and ethereal!
“Looking good!” Alfred whistled, perching himself on your shoulder as you left the bathroom, your shoes clapping the cobblestone floor as you made your way down a set of castle stairs.
Your hand brushed against the wooden banister that guided you down the winding staircase to lead towards another corridor that ended with the kitchen. You walked into the kitchen, filled with brass cooking materials and glass jars that held bundles of different roots and spices in them. The kitchen also had a cobblestone floor, matching the stone oven that took its place at the left side of the room.
The two arched, wooden doors had been pulled open at the end of the kitchen, beside the smooth stone sides that had the glass jars on top of them. The doors lead to the castles court garden, blossoming with roses, and other times of flowers you didn’t know the names of; you had never been familiar with flowers and leaves, tree kinds or other things like them.
You slowly walked out into the garden, bushes beautifully kept, leading out to a stagnant fountain. It was there that Otker walked, his hand illuminated with some sort of green aura, as if tiny fairies circled around his palms to the tops of his long fingers. With the slight movement of a finger, flowers began to bloom from the bush next to him, and as if nothing has ever happened, he walked past the bush to another part of the luxurious garden.
Alternative to the flower crown prompt! You kinda suck at making flower crowns but you keep going out and doing it anyway cause you'll get better right? And somehow you end up with flowers everywhere and sticking out of your hair and clothes and you hear laughter from behind you "Would you like some help, starshine?"
Meet Talsim, your Fae soulmate! He’s very pleased to see you again.
Male monster X gender neutral reader, 3141 words.
Naturally, you dropped the flower crown and spun around.
You were at the edge of the clearing, where the little yellow flowers grew lush and thick. The trees stretched up around you, tall and dark. And lying on his stomach, perfectly balanced on one of the many branches, was a man.
He had brown skin and rather fine features that made him took impossibly elegant. His hair was long. Even tied into a thick braid, it still swung all the way to his ankles. It looked like he should have been wearing some long, hand-woven robes, but he was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans.
interesting problem set up here, I enjoyed watching the characters respond to it and work through it 🌼 (just a warning, the fae exhibits possessive behavior that might be triggering for some people)
-mod sigh & team kink
[This idea has been rattling in my brain and I had to share it.]
I know we all love the ‘humans are space orcs’ concept… but imagine, onboard the new ship they’ve been assigned to, the human meets an actual space orc. A massive monster… fangs and tusks and scars and a battle-hardened stare, looming over all the other life forms on the ship in its thick indestructible armour it refuses to remove. It barely drinks, it doesn’t need sleep, its massive shoulders are heavy with the terrible things it has experienced. Compared to the squishy & delicate human body, this thing is a walking tank.
… Except instead of hating/ignoring one another, the human and the monster start bonding over both coming from death planets. The human is excited to find a life form who doesn’t quiver with fear at the vague description of a jellyfish and the monster is ecstatic to meet someone who understands the feeling of being bitten by a qua’lem (cats are pretty close). They sit together and compare dangerous animals and locations as the other aliens look on in confusion and fear… oh, you also have dense jungles of deadly hidden predators, boiling acid lakes, tamed predatory killers, and areas with horrendously high and low temperatures? Sick!!
It doesn’t take long before the two of them become totally inseparable. The human loves not feeling like some kind of crazy outsider and the monster is overjoyed they’ve finally found an equal in this unkillable marshmallow.
Monster: When I was a youngling, a grol-lik stung straight through my armour. The pain lasted for approximately 16 human hours.
Human: Oh yeah man, I get that. As a kid I got a wasp stuck in my shirt. It stung me like four times, it was awful, and all my cousins just laughed at me…
Monster: [using their arm screen to research human courting methods] I see.
theartofmadeline
tangentwithtanner
turnnoffyourmind
ellievsbear
stormborns
snowghoul
prguitarman
kaledo-art
